Gunship
by RockyKelboa
Summary: Bulma Briefs is contracted to work on a secret weapons project in a military lab—one that's led by a hostile general and his lieutenant. Her life is changed forever when she learns the project uses her inventions to experiment on a being that is all too familiar. As Bulma tries to thwart the general's plans, obstacles keep getting in the way including her captive.
1. The Asset

**_Author Notes _**

_Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at /works/17002452. Written for the V__egebulocracy 2018 Big Bang. Full MA version of the story can be read there._

_GUNSHIP is the first in a much larger series of stories. This one is loosely based on The Shape of Water—especially Michael Shannon's character. Disclaimer: I borrowed bits of his dialogue because I am just so enamored with every line out of that man's vile mouth. This one is also inspired by the music of an amazing synthwave band called Gunship (especially their track 'Kitsune'). Also borrowed are some planets/enemies from the Metroid series, because I was under a time crunch and not imaginative enough to come up with my own. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯_

_This story is an AU that starts six-ish years after Goku kills King Piccolo, roughly the timeframe where the Saiyan Saga would have happened. But in this world, KP doesn't release our beloved Piccolo Jr. before he dies (ugh.. I know. I'm sorry!), meaning Kami dies with him, so there are no Dragon Balls._

_Planet Vegeta and the Saiyan race are alive and well (almost). The Saiyans in this universe are run by a corrupt council of priests (pretty similar to the roman papacy back in the day). They're not space pirates, but they do rule over their empire with an iron fist and exploit the resources and inhabitants of all the planets within their rule._

_My undying thanks to the artists that lent their talents to provide the story with some killer artwork: BianWW and Deathandstrawberries! And thank you LadyLan for beta reading and musicofthespheres for making sure I use real, not made up words that I think are real. Also the rest of the Vegebulocracy crew who make this such an awesome community._

_Sorry for all of the POV hopping. This was the first story I've ever written. Lol._

* * *

**Chapter 1: The Asset**

Lieutenant Hoffstead was pretty sure he was going to die today. This certainly wasn't the first time he envisioned his own demise at the hands of some supernatural being. Earth had its fair share of them. And each time the army was tasked to subdue some deviant terror, the same thought always popped into his head: that his unwavering obedience to authority would be his fatal flaw.

Hoffstead never truly wanted to be a soldier, but Hoffstead was a great soldier—esteemed among the enlisted men and the officers above and below him. His rank rose through the years simply because he followed the chain of command to a fault, a trait that garnered him the respect of both his superiors and his men.

Hoffstead's father retired as a colonel and his grandfather before him. He was predestined to follow the same path, which he did with the dutifulness of a repressed cadet. From a private obeying his sergeants, and a sergeant obeying his lieutenants, and so on and so forth, Hoffstead was now a direct report to General Strickland himself, the highest-ranking officer in the Army's Western Division and Head of the Department of Weapons Research and Development.

Having served under the General for three years, Hoffstead now understood that if there was ever a man born to lead with the frenzied zeal of a dictator, it was Strickland. Unlike Hoffstead's father or the officers who instructed him in the camaraderie of the Old Breed, Strickland's reckless ego led his men into situations that were precarious at best, all for the advancement of his own position. Hoffstead knew this, yet he entered each mission without question. His survival instincts under Strickland were in a losing battle to both fear of the man and the lieutenant's lifelong oath of service.

Thus here he was, alone with the general in the middle of the Western Deadlands, scanning the extraordinary powers that lied within a crashed alien aircraft.

"Open the door," his general said. His shadowy figure stood at the edge of the deep crater where the alien's ship had landed. The sunset began to dip behind him.

Despite the alarms of impending danger that fought to stay his hand, Hoffstead didn't blink. His entire life was dedicated to refining a stoic, emotionless demeanor. He extended a steady hand, pulling and twisting the door handle on the space ship. In his other hand, he gripped the gun.

He whispered an internal prayer that the anti-ki darts in the chamber would work, that they wouldn't just prick and anger the powerful creature that lie dormant inside the pod. He fingered the trigger on the weapon and inhaled sharply, swinging the portal open.

Expecting to see a creature like the last big green menace, Hoffstead was shocked to find a being that looked like a human man. He had been flung from his seat and lied awkwardly against the ship's console, which smoked and sparked beneath him. A trail of blood traced the man's face from a wound near his hairline and dripped off his chin onto a white and gold breastplate.

"What are you waiting for?" his general barked from above. "Shoot it."

It was hard to believe that the man inside the pod registered eighteen thousand on the power level scanner. He appeared no more than five and a half feet tall. Hoffstead discharged his weapon at the man's thigh, twice to be sure. When he remained motionless, Hoffstead let out his breath and thanked the gods that this supernatural was not going to kill him today.

It wasn't until he hoisted the unconscious man over his shoulder that he realized what first seemed like a fur belt was actually a tail. It uncoiled from his waist and hung limply as the lieutenant carried the alien up the crater's steep walls and deposited him in the armored truck.

Lieutenant Hoffstead watched as the general threw a capsule at the spherical ship, shrinking it into the palm of his hand with tight lipped smile.

"Sir, may I ask what we're going to do with him?"

"I do believe we just found our missing monkey!" The general's smirk grew wider, and he shook his head with contemptuous glee. "All that energy in one animal… We're going to learn how it works! And I know just the scientist to do it."

* * *

Bulma Briefs trotted alongside Lieutenant Hoffstead through the maze of hallways and fortified doors that led to the Weapons R&D wing of the military base. The white, sterile corridors were familiar. The young scientist had lent her services to the military before, specifically to aid them during the war of King Piccolo—almost a decade ago, when she had developed a technology to temporarily subdue the green slug's powers.

Previously, whenever she'd worked in the facility, it had been teeming with scientists and engineers buzzing about their latest projects like a chorus of bees. Today, her high heels echoed down the hallways that were lined instead with combat-readied soldiers. All of them stood, unmoving statues, ten feet apart along the walls that led to the base's most heavily fortified lab: a giant, atomic-grade dome built for testing secret weapons that was known as _The Tank_.

Inside the dome's first armored door, a short hallway presented two more. One opened to the large, curved room where blasts and bombs were tried before the thick panes of a nearly indestructible plasma window—the scientists and military personnel safely collecting data in a state-of-the-art viewing room behind them.

But the lieutenant stopped before the opposite door—the one that led to a smaller lab meant for the most clandestine initiatives: a secure, soundproofed room that was no larger than a two-car garage and monitored solely by the general and his lieutenant.

Before Hoffstead could scan his fingertips on its key panel, the door beeped open, and through the narrow crack slipped General Strickland. He snapped it shut behind him, looking as if he'd just wrestled a grizzly bear. The general's usually crisp white shirt clung to his torso, sticky with blood. A red-stained cloth was wound tightly around his left hand. And in his right, he clasped an anti-ki wand, which dripped the crimson fluid from its sharp, hissing tips onto the pristine white tiles.

"General? What the hell is going on?" Bulma forgot military decorum as her mouth gaped open at the man. His face lit with a menacing zeal.

"First things first." He extended the index finger of his hastily bandaged hand. "You run your tests, you keep your trap shut. The thing we keep in here is the most dangerous asset ever to be housed in this facility. The only souls permitted in this room are you, myself, and the lieutenant."

Bulma nodded, a mix of curiosity and fear beginning to churn at the General's wolfish visage.

Lieutenant Hoffstead had disclosed very little on the phone, only that she was to report the base immediately. That the project was the general's making did not surprise Bulma. General Strickland was a callous man with boundless ambition. His tone was always tinged with self-righteous fervor, especially as he talked down at the female genius.

"This beast is more powerful than the gods themselves! Clocked in at eighteen thousand," he said, jerking his head to punish the brown strands of hair that disobeyed his clean-cut and fell loose against his forehead. The general beeped the door open and extended the wand to show-off his prize.

Bulma's breath caught in her throat. He looked just like Goku, but smaller in stature than her lifelong friend: his sharp features, coarse black hair spiked in disarray, and most notably, the long tawny tail that flicked behind his legs. The alien hovered inches from the ground, chained by his wrists to the ceiling—a nightmarish picture covered nearly head to toe in blood. His black eyes pinned in their direction as a low growl emitted from his red-stained teeth.

"I hauled that vile thing out of a hole in the desert. Thank gods I did. A rabid animal like that unleashed on the world. Can you imagine?" Strickland scrunched his nose and twirled his anti-ki wand, not taking his eyes from the alien.

"Is that really necessary?" Bulma asked. Her eyes darted between the crackling baton and the cavernous wounds below the alien's ribs where the wand's spiked tips had gouged him open. A puddle of his vital fluids grew below his boots that were cuffed around his ankles.

"Well, I tried rubbing its belly first, Dr. Briefs, but the fucker bit me." The general smiled wickedly and approached the alien.

"Fear is the first rule of submission." He held out the instrument. Its tips sizzled an inch from the alien's cheek; though, he refused to flinch. Instead, he bared his sharp teeth and spat something in a harsh, guttural language.

"What's that? Not scared yet, huh? Go ahead, I dare you to take another bite."

The general extended his bandaged hand, taunting the man, seemingly unaware of the furry appendage that whipped out from behind to seize him around the waist.

"Oh, don't start with that again. Don't you know any other tricks?" The general laughed and thrust the wand into the man's gut. The alien roared. Even against the dampened walls, his voice bounded through the room like thunder through a canyon as the weapon crackled and tore further into his flesh.

"Stop!" Bulma yelled. Her hands were clasped over her ears. It felt as if her own insides were being ripped open at the agonizing sound.

Her mind traced back to the Piccolo battles, when a young Goku killed the tyrant by blasting his small, ki-charged body through the slug's heart. The general had been determined to search out the monkey child that had slayed the powerful being, and Bulma knew that Strickland wasn't looking to throw her friend a parade. He wanted to source Goku's powers for himself.

Thankfully, throughout the years Goku's existence became an urban legend, a fable told by few of Earth's citizens each anniversary of King Piccolo's demise. Most didn't believe that the supernatural monkey kid existed, and Strickland himself propagated the falsity that the army destroyed the tyrant under his own command. Only Bulma and her friends knew the truth, but they kept quiet for Goku's sake. The Briefs did everything they could to safeguard his identity, including the amputation of his tail. Well, that was one reason they removed it.

"I know, Dr. Briefs, that this project disturbs your delicate sensibilities. It can't be helped. You're a daughter of the gods. It's in your nature."

The alien's roar subsided into heavy pants, and his tail withdrew to hang listlessly behind him.

Finally, the general ripped the wand away from his flesh and twirled it around as he walked toward her. A maniacal grin twisted across his lips. "Perhaps, I should find a man better suited to the task."

Bulma balled her fists at her sides. She refused to make a lab rat out of the alien, yet whatever the general was planning was better left to the painless dignity her conscience required, rather than some subservient drone or worse. "What is it you want me to do?"

His square jaw twitched before he fixed his steely gaze in her direction. "Fix it up, then report to my office for details."

His attention turned to Hoffstead, who stood like a prop against the wall, anti-ki gun clasped in his hand. "Assist the doctor and redose the creature every twelve hours."

The lieutenant saluted his accord.

"But wait!" Bulma shouted. "That serum was designed for gastropoids like King Piccolo. It's not meant for mammals."

The general shrugged and shoved the bloodied wand into her arms, staining her lab coat. "Dealer's choice, Dr. Briefs."

With Strickland out of earshot, Bulma cursed him to the next dimension and turned to his lieutenant. "You heard the man," she said. "Prep a bed and a med kit."

The chained man's vital life drained into a crimson pond below his feet. In her mind, as terrifying as he appeared, this alien was no different from Goku. He wasn't some tyrannical demon who deserved to be tortured to the gates of Hell. Power levels don't automatically make foes, as Goku was living proof.

"Ma'am," the lieutenant started, unmoving from his position against the wall. "It would be wiser if you retrieved–"

"I'll be fine, lieutenant. Give me the gun." She observed the lieutenant's internal debate, sizing her up. "That is, unless you want him to die on your watch."

Reluctantly, Hoffstead placed the anti-ki gun in the doctor's outstretched palm. He backed toward the door, his eyes fixed between the fiery little woman who stood like a warrior in the center of the lab, weapons in each hand, and the alien who hung before her out of reach, unable to do anything but feebly hiss between his teeth.

Bulma listened to the door beep shut before the weapons clattered to the ground. Fixing her gaze on the bound and battered man, she held up her empty hands and approached with caution. A barely audible growl rumbled from his chest, and his ominous eyes fought to remain open and locked to hers.

Once she was within arm's reach, when their faces were nearly aligned, Bulma swallowed her fear. _It's just Goku, it's just Goku,_ she repeated in her head like a mantra as she placed a delicate palm on the man's ribs, over the two deep holes the wand created. She pressed down. His inky irises, hazy with blood loss, suddenly lit as his brows knit into a hostile frown. The skin beneath her hand erupted in heat, and the alien sprung to life, thrashing against the cuffs, which hissed and sparked. He spat at her in a husky voice, red flecks misting her face in words she couldn't understand.

Bulma wrapped her free arm around his waist and hugged him, pressing her palm harder against his wounds. She buried her head in his bare chest, hiding any susceptible flesh out of range from his gnashing fangs.

"Calm the fuck down! I'm trying to help you!" She regretted wearing high heels. Her feet slid in the pool of his blood while the alien continued to fight and curse her, nearly knocking her to the floor.

Bulma heard the door open and tipped her head to see the lieutenant scramble to roll the cot inside and pick up the weapons she'd dropped. "Don't shoot!" she shouted.

Lieutenant Hoffstead froze. The white knuckled grip he held on his gun belied his soldierly countenance. With the scientist covering the alien protectively, he didn't have a clean shot.

"I need you to move ma'am," he ordered.

"Not until you drop your weapon." Another dose of the untested substance shot into his vulnerable system could cause permanent harm or kill him.

Already, Bulma felt the energy waning from the man in her grip. The heat left his skin as his body stilled and growls subsided into faint, wheezing breaths. His black eyes, blazed in bitterness, fed her guilt as she lifted her chin and stared into them.

She cursed herself for ever letting the military get a hold of the anti-ki technology. Back when she developed the devices and serums, as King Piccolo laid waste to entire cities and wiped out half of the army, Bulma was desperate to lend her skills to temper the dangerous menace. That these weapons would be used recklessly against someone who hadn't posed a direct threat, simply to advance some overzealous general's yearning for power and prestige, was not something she had considered at the time.

The man in her arms struggled to compose his breath. Blood sputtered from his mouth with a cough and dripped down his chin.

"Don't just stand there lieutenant! He's bleeding out. Help me get him down."

Decisive to the demands screamed by his field medics, the doctor's sharp declaration spurred the lieutenant into action. Lieutenant Hoffstead traded his weapon for his keys at his belt and unfastened the cuffs overhead.

The doctor refused to unwind herself from the beast. When the thing dropped down, he took the small woman with him, landing them both in the puddle below with audible splat. Hoffstead thought to draw the gun again from his holster, but before he could move, the dainty girl rolled him off her as she howled, "Lift him, you dolt!"

Hoffstead helped the bloodsoaked doctor heft the alien onto the cot. But before he could cuff the beast to the bed, he instead found his palms pressing against his wounds at her instruction. If she wasn't so headstrong, she would have made a great officer: fearless, fast-acting, no-nonsense—clearly not squeamish to the carnage of battle. Sometimes he wondered who he feared more, the young Dr. Briefs or Strickland.

He watched as the doctor extracted a small tin case from her pocket and flicked it open. They were capsules, her family's flagship patent. The small cylindrical containers, each labeled with a coded number, sat in the palm of her hand. She plucked the smallest one from the tin, activating it with a click of her thumb and tossed it to the ground.

When the smoke cleared, four units of dark fluids laid at her feet. From his vantage, they looked like any other blood bags.

"It's synthesized," Bulma lied, snatching one up. "Made for any species." The lieutenant was not a man of science; though, she knew him to be a man of duty. "Hoffstead. This is just between us. Your orders were to help me fix him."

Hoffstead nodded; technically, that was true. Besides, the alien looked white as snowfall, and his breath was sharp and shallow. It would not bode well for them if that thing died today.

Bulma hastily hooked up the IV that would provide the man with the blood of his species: Goku's blood, which took great pains to collect from her needle-fearing friend in the event that he needed it himself.

The alien watched the fluids slither through the tube from the corners of his eyes. His arm twitched as if he was trying to pull it away from the encroaching substance. Bulma leaned over him and clasped her hand around his chin. Turning his face to hers, she stared at him earnestly for a moment, hoping that somehow he would understand that she was trying to save his life. As weak as he was, she could still see hate smoldering in the blackness of his eyes, but he was helpless to fight. A feeble frown flickered across his face as she went to work repairing the gaping wounds.

Beneath the blood and grime that was caked onto his frame were scars—hundreds of pale, jagged lines etched across his skin.

"Where the hell did you come from?" she wondered.

* * *

"Knock before you enter my office," Strickland said without looking up from his shaking hand. He hooked the suturing needle through the layers of his skin that barely held his pinky to his palm, listening to the doctor's bitter huff. "Go back out and knock, then we'll talk. That's the protocol."

The woman spun back to the open door and banged her fists against the frame. She was always testing the limits of his lenience, the unruly bitch. If she wasn't an anomaly, somehow blessed by the gods with unnatural beauty combined with a genius he'd never witnessed among men, her insubordinate ass would be assigned to a cell in the military prison.

"See, was that so hard?" He glanced at her from under his lids while he knit the fibers of his palm back together. Her appearance was unseemly, like she'd been swimming in the lakes of Hell. She stood before his desk, fair features clashing with the crusted blood that stained her face and clumped the exotic blue strands of her hair.

"I know what you're thinking," he said, loud enough to halt the insolent noise that was about to leave her lips. "Seems downright human? Hell, I bet if it weren't for that tail, you'd be asking it to buy you a drink, flashing your titties after a few martinis."

The general lifted his gaze to enjoy her reaction: crossed arms and cocked hip, her pretty face bent into a bitchy frown.

"The thing is, Dr. Briefs, we humans were created in the gods' image. You don't think that's what the gods look like do you?"

Before she could unhinge her clenched jaw, Strickland answered for her. His voice boomed across the desk as if she was two rooms away. "No! The gods look like humans, Dr. Briefs! Like me, or even you... Maybe a little more like me."

His focus returned to serenely sew his skin. "Now, I know some primitive woodland tribes worship the little primate. They call him _The Savior_... _Tch!_ Can you believe that?"

He glanced back up at her from his work. She was staring at his hand with narrowed eyes, the corners of her lips turned up in the faintest smile, gloating.

For the moment, he ignored her and calmly tied a knot in the threads and snipped the ends. When he was done, he stood and leaned over the desk to meet the doctor face-to-face.

"Your job, Dr. Briefs, is to find a way to harness that creature's power," he said in the same even tone he used on his men. A smirk rolled across his lips, watching her refined features flick up from his palm.

"I want to develop weapons with the strength to bring down one of those motherfuckers!" Strickland shouted and pounded his good fist against the wood, earning a gratifying jolt from the woman.

The doctor shook her grisly dreads. "But, he's intelligent! We can't chain him up like an animal for our experiments. He's capable of language, of emotions. He's–"

"That what they taught you in vet school? Have you ever been to war, Dr. Briefs?" Strickland didn't wait for her negative response. "We've been killing sentient beings since the dawn of man. Wars, wars, always wars. If it's not nations, it's these _abominations_. Harnessing this kind of power would end that. No one would dare challenge us! Don't you understand? What's one filthy animal sacrificed in service to the greater good?"

"How do you expect me to engineer his power if he's drugged, prodded, and chained?" she asked with an incredulous tip of her head.

The general's square jaw twitched against his hardened features. He imagined yanking the woman across his desk, throwing her over his knee to beat the fear of the gods into her ass. Maybe another day when his hand wasn't shredded to bits.

"The bottom line is, doctor, this isn't a petting zoo. I don't want that thing here any longer than you do. Get me what I want. Get it quickly, or I'll find someone who will.

"Oh, and one more thing." Strickland pulled a capsule from his pocket and held it between his fingers. "See what you can do with this."


	2. The Intruder

**Chapter 2: The Intruder**

It was hard to tell how long she'd been inside the windowless room. Perhaps a day, maybe two. The alien's even, raspy breaths and the steady bleep of his monitors roused her brain whenever she tried to sleep. Each time, Bulma dreamt about waking to the blaring alarms of his dropping vitals. That they both made it through these critical hours was one small victory.

She raised her head from the imprint of the keyboard on her desk and spun her chair around to face him. The ferocious glare he lent her before was replaced by a restless coma, asleep but not peacefully. It was the alert sleep of an animal on guard. His brows were furrowed and his eyelids flickered as if he was following her movements behind them. Or maybe, he was just dreaming.

Leaving him to recuperate, Bulma peered into the damaged alien pod that had been housed within the general's capsule. It was no larger than five feet in diameter, built for one person, which led her to believe that is was simply an escape pod, meant to travel short distances to planets from a larger ship. Where had he been headed, and what happened to the mothership?

Smoke and electricity spewed from the ship's console as Bulma covered her mouth and stepped inside. Her foot kicked against a small object on the floor. It was some strange, rose-colored eyepiece. She fitted the object over her face and pressed the largest button on its side. Unintelligible characters sputtered across the tiny screen. Bulma set the object aside and moved on to extracting what information she could from the ship's fried database. Likely, it was seared stupid in a geomagnetic storm. That is, unless some crazy weaponry existed that could fry the insides of a spacecraft's electronics without damaging the outer hull.

There was one other person with the intelligence she possessed that could assist her in restoring and deciphering the contents of the ship's data: her father. Bulma spent the better part of the day repairing the ship's hardware to the point that she could encrypt and upload its data remotely to Capsule Corp's private servers. In the background, every now and then, the alien muttered in his sleep in a language she itched to know.

* * *

This sensation was familiar, the strands of an external consciousness that began to thread themselves deep into his mind. It wasn't like the thoughts of other Saiyans, which he was able to block and filter at will. He couldn't barricade this one out or partition it into some inaccessible corner. It lived freely alongside his own sleeping psyche. The invading consciousness began to form an image, a figure of a child floating in a space pod. The thick black hair of a Saiyan surrounded the cub's head, but his face was an unrecognizable blur.

_Tarble?_ Vegeta called to his brother—the only Saiyan besides the king and queen to ever gain this kind of access to his head—but the pod moved away, just out of his reach. _Answer me_, he called again. The little cub couldn't hear him. Its image began to disintegrate, and the pod morphed into a picture of a yellow star. A bright blue atmosphere formed around it, enveloping Vegeta's internal vision. He didn't recognize this sky. The image belonged to the invading psyche. _Brother, are you deaf? Answer me or get the fuck out of my head!_ There was no reply, but the presence remained, quietly weaving out its space in the prince's mind.

Annoyed by the intruder's silence, Vegeta forced himself awake, expecting the invading thoughts to fade away with his dreams, but remnants remained. It was barely there, but Vegeta still felt the fog of another's consciousness brushing against his own.

He tried to push it out by focusing instead on the sensations around him. He knew he'd been trapped like an animal, zapped and tethered for their experiments. But he couldn't remember how he'd gotten into this situation. His last memory was closing the pod and setting the coordinates for the Kanassa cluster. He remembered Raditz cracking some joke over the com-link as the two departed the capital, and the sleep drugs lulled him into stasis for his long journey through the galaxies to the front lines of battle.

When he first woke in the lab, his ki was depleted, nearly vanished, like it'd been drunk up by some external force. His shoulders ached overhead, and his abdomen burned with a searing pain. He recalled the sweet scent of a female's pheromones that hit him as the humanoid clasped her hand to his side. His foggy vision had been filled by her wide eyes, irises swimming in hues of vibrant blue. A halo of turquoise hair had pressed against his chest and filled his nose with her floral bouquet as he fought against her chains.

The woman was still nearby. He could smell her, hear her humming and the clatter of instruments as she rummaged around the lab. Vegeta cracked open an eye just as the woman sat down next to him, snapping on a pair of gloves. She smiled and chirped something in her language before she resumed her bright little tune. Every so often she'd flick her gaze to his curiously as she examined and redressed his wounds, completely undaunted that she was holding captive one of the most powerful beings in the universe. Even in his weakened state, he could snap her in half if he wanted, and he would do it too without any hesitation once he restored enough ki to break his chains.

Maybe yesterday's wounds had been severe enough to consume his energy. It's happened before in battle. But his power would always quickly return as his injuries healed with the speed of a Saiyan's metabolism. And throughout the night, just as the invading consciousness seeded his mind, he felt the spark of ki regenerating under the surface of his skin. He just had to wait it out.

The door to the lab beeped open, and the woman's features dipped into a frown as the two men approached. Another memory shook loose in his brain as he watched the woman stand to place her tiny frame between him and the soldiers.

The smug face of the one in charge ignited a phantom pain. He remembered the excruciating electricity that surged through his entire body and leached his power, its razor sharp prods that gored his flesh. That man would be first to go. Vegeta would tear his guts out with his bare hands.

The taller, timid humanoid circled wide around the bed and stood near the foot, facing him. The soldier feigned bravery as he clasped the heel of his weapon, but he wouldn't meet Vegeta's gaze and stared past him at the opposite wall.

Vegeta returned his attention to the woman, whose temper was getting away from her. Despite the language barrier, he discerned the tension that stretched her vocal cords, causing her voice to pitch. The boss just twisted his lips, amused by her pathetic show of strength. His stony features and even tone seemed to fuel her ire as she clenched her puny fists and waived them wildly.

A soft beep sounded from the end of the bed like an alarm. From the corner of his eye, Vegeta saw the taller soldier trigger his weapon and felt a projectile sting his thigh. He grit out a curse, feeling almost instantly as the small amount of ki he'd generated during the night was consumed, broken down and dissolved by some poison in the soldier's dart. Vegeta watched the woman wrench the dart from his leg. His vision tunneled around her. A feeling of euphoric heaviness washed over him, and the sounds in the room began to float away as he fell again into a hazy sleep.

* * *

Bulma frowned as she watched an upload bar slowly advance on her computer monitor. In her head, she replayed her argument with General Strickland.

An escort! She, Bulma Briefs, was to be under heavy guard—not permitted to leave the base, not even permitted to leave the Tank's tiny lab without the company of Lieutenant Hoffstead or one of his men—locked inside this room, same as her alien.

At least _he_ would be gone. That offered some advantages. One month, that's how long Strickland said he'd be away on a trip to Central Headquarters to review the progress of another asinine weapons project he was adopting—one that he claimed would rouse the alien's compliance and assist Bulma in testing his power safely within the confines of the military base. _What she asked for_, he claimed.

Whatever solution the general was brewing, Bulma knew that the end result would be the same regardless if the alien was tethered to her table for a month or a year. Eventually, he would be killed, dissected, and discarded like a lab rat. Or worse—if Strickland knew that Bulma had figured out years ago how to store ki, the alien would spend the rest of his life as a living battery, charging the military's weapons. She needed to help him escape; that was a cold, hard certainty. If she didn't, if he met a sinister fate at her hands, or anyone else's for that matter, it would destroy her. There was a solution to this predicament, she knew; she only needed to find it. Bulma glanced at the damaged ship beside her and wondered.

As she began to examine the ship's data log, she noted the consistency in which the same coordinates appeared. Every trip began and ended at the same local: his planet, she presumed. Though that wasn't the interesting bit. What drew her attention was the distance between coordinates versus the time supposedly spent in travel. This wasn't some escape pod meant to depart from a larger ship. This _was_ the ship. If the numbers were correct, his species had developed a mode of transportation that was literally hundreds of lightyears faster than the most advanced spacecraft on Earth, which incidentally was built by her father. Giddy with the discovery, Bulma eagerly sifted through the ships data long into the evening until a husky voice stole her attention.

"Onna." The man glared under his sleepy lids. But he wasn't looking at her, rather he was staring just behind her. The alien nodded his chin to gesture at what he wanted, and Bulma realized his focus was on the pink eyepiece that she'd flung onto her desk. She picked up the equipment and rolled her chair over to him, adjusting the device over his face. He attempted to lift a hand, but was met with the clanking tension of his chains. Bulma pressed the largest button on the device, and it flicked on. The foreign characters illuminated across the small screen. He pulled at his cuff again, obviously not reading the information he desired.

Bulma bit her lip and scanned the man's body, searching for a sign of strength. Perceiving only his raspy, shallow breath and the strung-out map of his countenance, Bulma hesitantly moved to unlock one of his wrists from its imprisonment. She eyed the alien with apprehension as he lifted his hand, flexing and stretching the muscles in his palm before he brought it to his face. He punched a combination on the device's smaller buttons before an icon appeared: one small dot that blinked into two dots, then three, then four, and back to one before the pattern began again.

"You sneaky shit," Bulma uttered, recognizing the universal pattern. He was trying to call someone. Despite wanting to help him, the last thing she wanted was a fleet of pods full of his super-powered brethren arriving to find him detained in her labs. Bulma tried to snatch the device away, but his reflexes were quick. He grabbed her wrist tightly with his free hand, threatening to crush her dainty bones with a growl. She froze; they stared each other down with mutual distrust, waiting for his call to be answered.

The symbols blinked off, and what appeared to be an error message took their place. The alien grumbled as he flung her hand away. They continued to eye one another for a tense moment before he sighed and brought his fingers to the device again. Looking at her intently, he uttered something in his language, as if he expected her to understand. Symbols danced across the display as he spoke. He pressed a button, and the symbols on the screen changed into something completely new. He waited a second and pressed the same button, and the symbols morphed again. The alien repeated the gesture again and again. Each time the characters on his screen changed, his eyes flicked between her and their message.

_Languages!_ He was trying to find her language! Bulma let out a gleeful yelp as she realized that he wanted to communicate. The alien's eyes widened at her girlish display, but he continued to sift through the translations that were stored on his device, almost desperate to find characters she understood.

When the beep of the lab door sounded across the room, Bulma hastily snatched the eyepiece from the alien's face and wrenched his hand down to the bed, leaning over him to hide his bare wrist from Lieutenant Hoffstead. She ripped the bandage from his torso, pretending to inspect his wound. The lieutenant, however, barely made eye contact as he shot a dart of serum from the doorway and quickly departed. Bulma snorted at his cowardice. She looked over at the man beside her. His eyes had rolled back into his head as he slipped into another round of syrupy sleep.

* * *

Vegeta sifted his fingers through the vapors of the amber cloud that carried him through the air. Below him stretched an expanse of lush, green foliage, its verdant scent assailing him with a sense of calm. The yellow star above him warmed his skin, and the clear, blue sky lay waste to the incubus of burden that typically plagued his conscience. Here, he was alone and free. In the arms of the other's visions, the princely duties of his Saiyan race receded to the background of his mind. Gone were the hardened obligations of politics and economy, the weight of his lineage, the outdated traditions and religion. Instead, a carefree weightlessness enveloped his soul. Deep down he knew that he was living vicariously through the thoughts of his intruder, but in his drug-addled sleep, he couldn't push them away. Still, it was how he imagined Tarble's life being whenever he let himself believe he was alive. Away from their ancestral home, his brother was free.

Vegeta didn't know why he was connected to his sibling again, unless the boy was here, living somewhere on this backwater planet where he unintentionally found himself a prisoner. But if the visions were any indication, Tarble was indeed alive. More than that, Tarble was _happy_, a word Vegeta never dared to utter or even really understand. He was the crown prince of a warrior race that subscribed only to the wills and whims of their merciless gods through the priests and priestesses that spoke to them. Strength and sacrifice—nothing else surpassed that, especially not now. Their empire was embattled in a bitter war against a powerful foe, yet Vegeta couldn't help them. He was the strongest of his race ever born, the one the prophecies foretold would one day ascend and become a living legend. Yet now he found himself powerless to do anything but slip into the sublime stupor of another Saiyan's mind, skimming the planet's vast turquoise oceans on a magical golden cloud.

The moments when the drugs wore off were the hardest, when he was brought back to the hard reality of not just his captivity, but his duty. His people needed him. Desperately they fought on the outskirts of the empire for what seemed to be, at first, small skirmishes over a few economic resources. But as the one-off battles quickly escalated, planet by planet, the Saiyans realized that they were victim to a calculated surgery to gut their militaristic and economic strongholds.

The Cold Empire had far superior technology and a vast army of unwitting soldiers to carry out their agenda. So great was Lord Frieza's ability to capture and subjugate his foes through a vicious psychological regimen, that the Saiyans found themselves fighting their own brothers and sisters. Those who once stood beside them in battle, the pride of their race, had been reduced to mindless drones. Their tails severed by the lizard lord in his belief that the appendage was the key to unlocking the legend of their race's ascension. The Saiyan Empire was the last vestige of strength in the universe, and the Colds were moving quickly to destroy them.

He wondered how long he'd been here on this planet, a prisoner of these humans. Judging by the nearly healed wound below his ribs, he guessed it had been days, maybe a week.

It seemed that the woman never left the lab. Her scent filled the room in a thick fog, and her appearance grew increasingly haggard. Red rims lined her eyes and her oily hair was now bound on top of her head in some sort of nest.

Twice a day, she'd replace the bags of fluids that fed him and filtered him, wash his skin with a warm cloth, and tend to his wounds. After that, she'd work on the large computer, muttering to herself and clicking away at a frenzied pace. She took apart his scouter and put it back together again. Now it seemed she was building a replicate. For what purpose, he didn't know.

He'd given up on his displays of strength, curses and growls abated. Not because he trusted her, but because she seemed immune to his intimidation, or too busy with her experiments to notice. Plus, it was no longer worth his waning energy.

The poison from the darts was compounding in his veins. Every joint in his body ached, and he could no longer feel his ki regenerate between doses, not even in the short periods while he was awake. With its disappearance, so too his hope began to fade. Even if his people came for him, if they found him like this, if his power didn't return, he would be sacrificed by the church's council—labeled an inferior and exiled, just like his brother had been. A prince to a pauper, that would be the punishment for his capture.

It was these waking moments that Vegeta felt most defeated. When he should be ripping the head off the putrid lizard, he was instead trapped on some shit planet being poisoned from the doorway by a pathetic excuse of a humanoid, too afraid to step near him.

There wasn't anything left for him to do but watch the woman work in between the waves of unconsciousness where he lived inside the heady memories of what he hoped was his brother. Tarble, it was beginning to seem, was the only thread of hope he had left. Even as pitiful as his brother's powers supposedly were, he was a Saiyan after all, and he would come for him—but only if he could hear him too.


	3. The Prince

**Chapter 3: The Prince**

Any moment now, the alien would rouse. Every twelve hours was the same cycle. The fortified door would beep open to the lieutenant's robotic display. He'd shoot the man in the leg and retreat to stand guard outside the lab with the other soldiers. Bulma would watch her patient's eyes roll to the back of his head before his lids closed and a weighty sleep rendered him unconscious for hours. Then she'd return to the tasks at hand: helping her father remotely upgrade his spacecraft with the alien's super lightspeed technology and creating translation software to install on the eyepieces. Intermittently, she'd find a brief hour to sleep on a hard cot, or more often at her desk, wash-up in the lab's adjacent bathroom, and eat the cold military rations Lieutenant Hoffstead provided.

Around hour six, the alien would start to talk in his sleep, his eyes darting behind his lids as he played out his dreams. By hours nine or ten, he'd finally wake. It was then that she tended to his needs, hoping the care she provided would build his trust. She did her best to smile and hide her fear of him. It seemed to be working. He no longer spat in his foreign tongue nor snarled like a predator; though he still trapped her in a hateful glare that made her blood run cold. She would fix that soon enough, once she could explain her motives.

Her latest breakthrough, she was certain would work. With the help of her father and Mr. Popo—the assistant to the late guardian of her planet, who tracked down Kami's old Nemekian vessel—she could build a database that matched the Namekian tongue to Earth's. Using the Namekian language as a bridge, she uploaded the database of other languages that lived on the alien's eyepiece and his ship. If her algorithms were correct, even on a crude level, the A.I. would be able to translate back and forth between all the stored languages to come up with the best interpretations of the two being spoken. She and the alien, if he cooperated, could improve them the more the software was used.

The general wasn't slated to return for weeks. If all went well, she would be speaking freely with the alien, and the spacecraft her father was refitting would be viable for deep space travel that could return him home within a month—not two-hundred light years, just one measly, Earthly month. She only had to come up with a plan to help him escape the military base to the Capsule Corp ship.

It was hour nine. He would wake soon. Bulma placed the pink display over his face and fastened her own green counterfeit.

"Rise and shine," she said shaking him gently, holding her breath as his lids slowly opened and the display on his face scrambled and settled into symbols she hoped he could read.

"Do you understand me?"

His display churned again, but his eyes were glassy and roved past the focus of the small screen. Bulma sighed. There was only so much time before he was dosed again. She had to get through to him now. She needed him to wake-up.

She pulled the eyepiece off his face and set it aside, hoping he wouldn't take her next move the wrong way. She stood from her stool and gathered her strength. Winding her arm behind her, she back-handed him as hard as she could across the cheek—once, twice, three times until he began to growl and his groggy eyes found hold on hers.

"It was the only way," she said after she'd refit the translator over his bent brow. "Do you understand me?"

The deadly glare remained, but he nodded.

_He nodded! It worked!_ Bulma couldn't help the laugh that erupted from her throat as she grabbed a hold of his hand.

A strangled but no less sharpened spat of words left his lips. Bulma's smile grew wider reading the translation on her eyepiece: "Die human woman. I will destroy your planet!"

She let go of his hand to clap giddily. _Now we're getting somewhere!_

He narrowed his black eyes further, studying her. Maybe the software wasn't working as well as it could yet, but the more they talked, the better. She would have to speak in simple sentences at first so that nothing was lost in translation. She was sure he could understand the most generic translation in the universe.

"My name is Bulma Briefs. I am smart." She tapped her finger to her sternum. "What is your name?" She pointed the same finger at him.

He rolled his eyes. "Vegeta."

"Vegeta!" she grinned, surprised to see that an alien name could translate to Earth's alphabet so fluidly. Likely, he was named for a person, place or thing that was known across multiple languages in the cosmos.

"Where am I?" His question unfolded across her screen.

"This is Earth. You crashed here. Do you remember?"

Vegeta shook his head. "I've never heard of this place."

Where the fuck was Earth? That someone wanted him as their prisoner didn't surprise him. Rebel groups all over the universe held bounties on his head. Besides being the heir to the Saiyan Empire, he had created numerous enemies over the years as his father's muscle. Where diplomacy failed, Vegeta succeeded—a formidable weapon whose name was synonymous with death. But why this Earth, a quiet planet outside any empire's control? It had nothing to do with him.

These frail humans, their technology, their poisons, their ability to reduce him to a slab of rotting flesh was baffling. The Sacred Council of his race was too focused on the purity of bloodlines and executing the demands of their fickle gods—letting their ships fail while planets he's never heard of built weapons that could take down the strongest Saiyan alive with a pin-prick.

It was futile. Even if his people tracked him here, they wouldn't let him live when they found him in this condition, ki-less and dying. No, they with finish the job, let him perish. It's what those fools had wanted anyway. Another heir would be born of his house. And if not, then he'd be plucked from one the church's Sacred Houses, which meant the House of Vegeta, the house of his father, would be replaced. His entire race would turn their backs on him, blast this lousy ball of shit with him still on it.

"What do you want with me?" he asked the woman. "The Saiyan Empire will not negotiate. Not even for a prince."

_Empire? Prince?_ Bulma's mind whirred. Who exactly did she have chained to her table? Besides the dark, chiseled features of his face and a body cut right from the pages of a men's fitness magazine, he certainly didn't appear princely. None of the refined characteristics from her childhood fairy tales were evident. This one acted more like a rabid animal: he bit and growled and thrashed his tail.

However, if he was telling the truth, if he was some feral prince of an intergalactic empire, undoubtedly there were people looking for him, beings with powers like his. He needed to understand that she was an ally, that the only force here working against him was the general—one man. The rest of the men on this base, and planet for that matter, were innocent.

She lifted the chain that restrained his hand. "I don't want to kill you or keep you here. I want to help you escape."

"Why?" he sneered, his lip lifting over a white fang.

Bulma placed her hand on his forearm, ignoring the dim warning that rumbled from his chest. It appeared that saving his life once already, caring for him for the past week, and creating a means to communicate didn't register even the faintest sign of goodwill. If he was a prince, he was an ungrateful one.

She tried her best to explain her motives. "I want to help you because you're not my enemy, because I don't think anyone should be imprisoned and tortured. And because..."

Bulma paused. She hadn't really considered telling the alien about Goku. Thinking about him now, how long she'd effectively protected him from suffering this same fate, brought a lump to her throat like choking on her own failure. The fact that she couldn't have possibly known there were others like Goku out there, that one would land on Earth—land smack in the bullseye of a misfortune that she created—did nothing to ease her conscience.

The alien's growl faded. At least he was listening.

"Vegeta, I know someone just like you. He's my friend, and every time I look at you, I see him, and it's killing me."

As he read her words, his eyes bulged in a flash of recognition, as if they shared the same secret. "You know a Saiyan?"

"A Saiyan? If that's what your species is called, he checks all the boxes: black hair, brown tail, super strength."

"He's my brother."

Bulma tipped her head in surprise. She read the words twice, wondering if there was some sort of mistranslation. Goku had a brother, a prince of a brother? How was that possible? Why would an alien prince grow-up on Earth with no memory of how he got here and no knowledge that he was an alien at all? It was pretty obvious Goku wasn't fully human; she'd known that the first time she gave the boy a bath and saw his tail was a fully functioning limb, not some costume piece glued to his bottom. Still, Goku being an alien from some far-away planet never entered her mind.

"Vegeta, are you sure? He's lived here his whole life. I've known him since he was a little boy."

"Is your planet blue? Does he ride a cloud?"

"Yes!" she nodded fervently as she gripped his arm. "Is that why you came? To look for him? I thought you crashed here by accident."

"I did." Vegeta curled his lip as he glanced at his space pod. "I didn't know he was here until now."

"But you were captured when you landed. How do you know about the Nimbus?"

"We're connected by our thoughts. I see his memories, sometimes his dreams."

That didn't make any sense. How could he see Goku's thoughts and memories? Maybe he was reading her dreams, and she just didn't remember them. It would make sense that she would dream about Goku and the Flying Nimbus. She hadn't seen the sky in over a week and was trapped in this room with someone that looked just like him. Maybe it was like when girls' periods sync-up, only dreams. Stranger things have happened, right?

But if Vegeta really could read Goku's mind, maybe Goku could read his. Though, that wasn't a comforting thought. If they could communicate telepathically, knowing Goku, he would charge the base regardless of the threats he'd face. Goku was noble to a fault. If he became aware of his long-lost brother's situation, he wouldn't hesitate to risk his life to save him.

"Does that mean he already knows you're here?"

"No," Vegeta said. "When a Saiyan is away from other Saiyans for too long, the connection weakens, eventually breaks. Even with blood relatives. He doesn't hear me anymore." A look of defeat briefly crossed his face before he erased it, pinned her with a dark stare. His gravelly voice bit the air as his words spewed across her screen. "You must send for him. He is still Saiyan, and he can destroy this place!"

"No!" Bulma shook her head definitively. "Absolutely not."

She couldn't relay a message to have Goku attack the base and extract Vegeta from the labs without putting Goku's own life in danger. After all, he was the monkey General Strickland had been searching for all these years. More than anything, Bulma wanted to free Vegeta, but asking her to put her close friend in the crosshairs of thousands of those poisonous guns was out of the question.

That same fiery contempt she saw the day he arrived reignited in his eyes and turned their paper thin trust to ash. But Bulma refused to feel guilty for protecting her friend. She let go of the prince's arm and leaned back in her chair, putting space between them.

"He may be Saiyan, but he would never do that. He wouldn't kill anyone if he could help it. Besides, there's a bigger problem. This whole base is armed with those guns. He would be shot on site and chained here next to you if he came. _I'm_ your best shot."

Vegeta groaned as her message scrolled across his display. He alternated between clenching and stretching his cuffed hands, every knuckle aching as the poison chewed him up from the inside. Flashes of anger fizzled into a frustrated hopelessness. He was going to die here like this. Of all the infinite ways to be struck down in the universe, the Saiyan Prince, the most powerful Saiyan ever born, was going to be put-down slowly, humiliatingly by some pitiful earthlings and their poisoned darts.

"You are just a weak, human woman. What good are you for me?"

Without knowing his language, she could still hear the desperation that cracked his vocals. She could see in the way he ground his teeth every time he flexed and clenched his palms that he was in pain.

"I have a plan... most of a plan. There's a ship, one that's faster than yours, that can bring you home. But we need to break you out of this place. We just need to figure out how."

"How is that a plan? Are you an idiot?" He looked up from his fists with a sneer. "Get my brother! Or better yet, fix my gods-damned com-link."

"I'm the furthest thing from an idiot, asshole! It's half of a plan, like I said! Give me a chance to come up with the rest." Bulma ignored the comment about his communications. The ship's communications were toast, and his eyepiece was offline, but not on her end. Maybe it lost service when he was in stasis and never recovered due to what she assumed was a storm he'd flown through. Whatever the problem was, she wasn't about to fix it and invite his people to Earth. He said they wouldn't save him anyway, so what did that matter? Escape would come by her. Anything else was too risky.

Vegeta was done listening to the woman's delusional blathering. He whipped his head forcefully, flinging the scouter to the floor. It was as useless as she was. His only chance now was to reconnect to his brother's mind, if that was even possible.

Nothing in his childhood education spoke of rebuilding the ties to the mind of an inferior, an exiled Saiyan—not even a blood relative. Once the children were gone, they ceased to exist, despite that the sacred texts foretold their return. The exiles were weak, sent to remote, inhospitable planets outside of the empire to force the will to survive on them—force them to grow their strength, to prove it by returning home. Their ties to the Saiyan Gods, the ancestors and their planet, according to the teachings, were supposed to deliver the strong ones back into Saiyan society. Yet that outcome was unheard of. None of the cubs were seen again. Vegeta assumed they all had perished. The priests told him as much, that the weaklings met their rightful fate, just sacrificial lambs for insatiable gods. But, it was a lie. Here he was on one of those planets, not inhospitable, but lush and vibrant. His brother wasn't dead, or even weak. He was alive. He was happy, and he no longer knew what he was or where he came from.

Vegeta closed his eyes, trying to focus on Tarble's consciousness, trying to call it to him. He ignored the woman's commotion as she ran around to collect the scouter from wherever he'd flung it, prattling on and on in her sharp, pitchy tones.

His focus turned inward to the center of his mind, and long, constricted breaths emanated from the back of his throat in calming waves until his brother's consciousness reformed in his internal vision. Tarble's mind lit inside his head like the white flare of a passing star shining through the porthole of his ship.

The light quickly shifted into murky shades of blue, the colors twisting and turning on themselves like waves. A cool ripple drifted over the surface of his skin, and he felt the light tug of water across his limbs. Tarble was swimming. When he came up for air, the threads of light from the Earth's setting star warmed his face, and the hazy blues of his vision focused on a sharp, dark tree line. Above it, the sky was ablaze with fiery colors. The clouds spilled from the red orb like streams of molten lava. All that could be heard was the hum of the leaves in the breeze and the tiny streams that trickled from Tarble's hair into the lake below.

Vegeta watched Earth's day melt through Tarble's eyes. In his young life, he'd seen stars of all kinds dip below the cusps of hundreds of planets, setting their atmospheres ablaze in brilliant colors. But he'd never given sunsets much more than a passing acknowledgment, like glancing at a clock. Yet here, through his brother's vision, he took in every wisp of cloud and admired every warm gradient that reflected through them.

A nagging thought continued to itch at the back of his mind as he inhaled the crisp air that drifted under his nose. He was forgetting something. Yet he couldn't drag the thought into place. It didn't seem to matter so much. Vegeta was lost in Tarble's head, a bleary calm obscuring his focus as he stared at the horizon, face aglow with the last red rays that were chased over the edge of Earth by twinkling stars.

* * *

The feral prince was ignoring her, pretending to sleep after his little tantrum. Bulma collected his device from where he flung it to the floor and inspected it for damage before she stashed them both out of view inside his ship. She plopped down on her stool with a huff, rolling it back to the desk to rest her elbows and run her hands over her greasy scalp. Something would come. An idea had to come—an idea that didn't involve leading Goku directly into a hive of ki-thieving hornets.

Vegeta's claim still hadn't quite sunk in. It didn't make any sense. It was hard to believe that a powerful intergalactic empire would lose track of a young prince. And how would Vegeta, his brother, _accidentally_ crash on the very same planet? A part of her wondered if he was lying, but to what end? To kidnap him? Good luck in that tiny pod. Ugh... This tangent made her head hurt. She had to reserve her tired brain cells to come-up with an escape plan. If she came up empty handed, then and only then, would she inform Goku of his brother's plight and let her friend decide his own fate. She owed them both that much.

Hours passed as she hunched over her desk, racking her brain for an answer until the door beeped open. Bulma glanced at her watch as Lieutenant Hoffstead stepped inside the lab. It was midnight already. His face was drawn and weary. Blue bags lined his eyes from lack of sleep. Being the highest ranking officer in charge of Strickland's project and the only one permitted in the room had to be draining, especially given Hoffstead's perfect record. He would stand guard until he fell over dead. Ignorant, in her opinion. If only he would learn to speak for himself and do what was honorable rather than what he was told, she could convince him that what they were doing to Vegeta was wrong. Even if the lieutenant believed in the Strickland's utilitarian nonsense, he should still be able to recognize that it was all an excuse—good for the general's personal agenda, not necessarily good for the human race at large.

She sighed as Hoffstead unholstered his weapon and shot Vegeta in the thigh for what felt like the thousandth time. Thankfully, this time Vegeta was already asleep. Watching the whites of his eyes roll as he faded faster than a heroin addict—adrift in another world for long hours of the day and night—was something she hoped to never have to see again.

"General's requesting an updated medical report," Hoffstead remarked. "Good timing," he said, gesturing his chin toward the monitors. "Vitals look good, ma'am. Might even be able to get this project off the floor by the end of the week."

Bulma's head snapped to the monitors. _Vitals! That was it!_ Persuading the lieutenant to stop the doses indefinitely would require an extreme measure. She needed to crash his vitals—show the lieutenant that without a doubt, the serum was life-threatening, or he would never agree to stop administering it. A risky plan, but it was better than nothing. The difficulty would be smuggling a cocktail of substances that could temporarily send Vegeta's health careening over the edge yet still pull him back from the brink. If it worked and he healed, they would only have to disable the hundred or so soldiers in the R&D wing—an attack from the inside, as opposed to asking Goku to confront the tens of thousands that crawled the entire base. They could borrow uniforms from incapacitated soldiers, disguises to get off the base to Capsule Corp. It wasn't perfect, but it was the most promising plan she could come up with.

For the first time in eight days, Bulma buzzed the door to the lab from the inside. The lieutenant's tall silhouette stood against the fluorescent-lit hallway.

"Lieutenant?" she said, adjusting her eyes. The long white corridors that were spliced with black uniformed soldiers like rails down a track looked almost sinister now that her plan was setting in. Every ten feet in an maze of hallways, they'd be met with anti-ki guns, her guns. The lights bounced of their silver barrels and danced across the walls. "I need to shower."

Hoffstead nodded, gesturing to one of his soldiers. "Private Trunks," he said. "Escort Dr. Briefs to the barracks."

A young soldier that looked barely of age stepped out from formation against the wall and removed his helmet. The short hairs of his buzz cut were lavender, and his eyes were as blue as hers.

"Yes sir!" the private said. His face was stern as he stood tall and saluted his commanding officer before he turned to Bulma with a small smile and an almost imperceptible wink.

Bulma walked alongside the young private down the long corridors of R&D toward the exits that led to the courtyards and outer buildings.

"So doc," he said, spinning himself around to walk backward down the hallway in front of her, "you gonna tell me what you got in there? The guys are dying to know."

"Sorry kid, it's classified."

"You sure are pretty," he smirked, as if flattery would buy him a vowel.

"Nice try, soldier." Bulma rolled her eyes, feeling self-conscious about her grisly appearance, but couldn't help but return the boy's smile. It'd been a while since she'd seen a genuine grin.

They exited the doors into the courtyard. Sprinklers watered the lawn, and the lamps along the pathways glittered off the droplets, lighting them like stars. Bulma glanced up at the clear sky, taking in the vast celestial plain that sprawled overhead. Though instead of the curious wanderlust she felt whenever she gazed at the night sky, she was burdened by thoughts of her prisoner. His home lay far beyond what was visible to the naked eye. It was lonely, imagining the distance. The cold expanse of space that separated Vegeta from everything and everyone he knew was as far and detached as his path to freedom from the building behind her. The enormity of her responsibility swept through her as she inhaled the cool air.

"Doc?" The private stopped a few yards down the path on the left when he realized she wasn't behind him.

Bulma's attention snapped back to the present. But instead of following the young man to the barracks, she made a hard right towards the medical wing at the opposite end of the building they'd just exited.

"Barracks are this way!" He jogged to catch up with her, pointing across the lawn behind him.

"I know. I just need a few supplies first."

Private Trunks shrugged. He followed her into the medical wing with a bouncing gate, like he was excited to be torn away from the monotonous task of standing sentry to an unknown weapon, and even more excited to be participating in a secret errand outside of the lieutenant's purview.

She could feel the soldier watching her closely from the doorway of the dark pharmacy as she dug through the vials in the cabinets. Drawing the suspicion of an unknown private was not exactly what she had in mind for this adventure. She needed to decide, quickly. Sorting through the vials alphabetically, her fingers brushed across a vile of adrenaline, which struck her with an idea. She could stop his heart, briefly, and jolt him back to life with this. There was an abundance of drugs to stop a heart, and this could bring him back. Hoffstead only had to witness the so-called death of her prisoner before she brought him back to life. Seeing him revived from death's door would surely be enough to cease the endless barrage of ki-darts.

Bulma pocketed the drugs, turning away from the soldier as she stuffed them in her bra. She wasn't some inmate, surely the soldiers would have enough respect not to paw at her underwear if they searched her person.

The private watched her back from a few feet away. There was no way he was close enough to see what she was taking, yet she couldn't help feeling uneasy as she turned back toward the door, directing him to lead her to the barracks for a long-overdue shower.


	4. The Ploy

**Chapter 4: The Ploy**

The stench was unbearable. His brother dragged a giant aquatic creature with both hands, pulling it along a brown, dusty path. The planet's yellow star heated his skin, and the creature, ten times the weight of this young version of his brother didn't cause him to break a sweat. If he just ignored the atrocious smell, the rest was effortless.

A metallic rumble roared up behind him on the dirt road. It barely missed him as he flung the disgusting fish and himself from its path, listening to the crunch of metal. When the cloud of dust parted, he heard the Earth woman's voice.

"You're alive?" she asked from where she hid inside the overturned, tin contraption.

She was frightened as she peeked her head over the door. Like his brother, it was a younger vision of her, just a teen. Her blue eyes rounded. Clapping one hand to her forehead, the other darted for a weapon at her belt. It looked like the gun the cowardly soldier carried. She shot him. He pinched his eyes shut, anticipating the ki-draining hit to send his brother's body careening off to sleep, but unlike the soldier's gun, this one didn't steal his ki. It didn't even sting.

When he opened his eyes, she was pouring some sort of goo in his hair. The heavy perfume of it singed his nostrils; though he was glad the smell of the sea creature was gone. The blue-haired earthling rubbed his scalp viciously in a sterile tub.

"There, that's better," she said, grabbing a hose from the tiled wall. She sprayed his hair with hot water that blasted from end the apparatus in a steamy mist. Foam slipped into his eyes. It stung! He squeezed them shut.

"Vegeta!" Her voice was muffled, like she was speaking to him over the com-link, but light years away. He forced his lids open to a blur of blues and whites, blinking until the woman came into focus in the present.

Her damp hair fell limp over her shoulders, smelling like the soap from Tarble's memory, and the scouter sat askew across her face as she bent over his bed, smiling. What the hell was she so happy about?

"I have a plan now," the girl said with her annoyingly chipper confidence. "But you're really going to have to trust me."

Bulma bit her lip, debating how to explain this in a way that he would consider, despite that if she was in his place, she maybe... probably... almost certainly wouldn't agree to the proposition she was about to set before him.

She breathed a heavy sigh. "How do I explain this..."

Vegeta glared at her from behind his eyepiece. Growing impatience cast a shadow over his dark brows, and the tip of his tail flicked against the mattress with little thuds. "Out with it," he snapped.

"Okay!" Bulma clapped her hands as if to gain her own attention. "We need to get your power back, which means we need to convince the lieutenant that those darts are killing you. Technically, they are, but just not fast enough." Bulma cleared her throat and looked away before forcing herself to meet her patient eye-to-eye. "Vegeta, I need to stop your heart."

"What the fuck, woman! Are you insane?" he snarled. "If you're going to kill me, grow a pair and do it. Don't pretend your precious conscience needs my permission."

"That's not it, Vegeta! Kami, I'm not trying to kill you!" Bulma shouted over him. Did he really believe that she would put him down like a sick dog? She'd saved his life once already and attended to his every need over the past week, but he still snarled at her as if she was a headsman stalking his guillotine.

"It will be just for a minute," she tried to explain. "Just long enough to make the lieutenant think you're dying. I can bring you back!"

"No fucking way," he spat. "Do you think I'm stupid?"

"Of course not! If I really wanted to put you out of your misery, I would have done it while you were sleeping."

Vegeta didn't respond, just stared at her darkly. Bulma pulled the vials and syringes from her shirt, holding out the adrenaline between her fingers as she chucked the others onto the desk.

"This," she said.

"Go stick it in your own neck."

"No, Vegeta," she rolled her eyes. "Listen to me! This will revive you. You won't really be dead, at least not for long. I promise!"

Bulma leaned over him and grabbed his face with both hands, the same way she did before his last procedure—staring beyond the protective layer of darkness that shrouded his eyes into the fiery core that, despite everything they'd done to him so far, willed to stay burning. He had to say yes.

"No more darts. If this works, Vegeta you'll get your ki back! You can bust yourself out of this place."

The doubt radiating from the prince's face faltered as he read her message. His pupils skittered across her own as if he was searching for a sign of trust.

Vegeta wanted to believe her. More than anything, he wanted to get his power back and ascend to the legend he was meant to be. After he took revenge on every last one of these pathetic earthlings, he could save his empire from the Colds and rule it his way: unchallenged, out from under the thumb of the church, the queen, and even his father—a legendary, a living god. He would be free. If what this girl promised came true, he could die and be resurrected with a vengeance the way their sacred texts foretold. Each time he was brought back from the brink of death in battles, he came back stronger. Die now or die later—anything was better than his existence here, wilting away like a thirsty vegetable.

"Fine," he said. "Do it."

_Huh?_ Bulma nearly choked on the rest of her pleading ramble when she read his words—hovering inches above his face, her hands still clasped around his cheeks. He was serious. The blacks of his eyes were sharp as knives, absent of fear, as if dying on her table was the same as any of the other fights that were carved across his skin.

Her emotions swirled inside her chest and stole the air from her lungs like plunging into icy waters. Now was not the time to panic. She let go, spun away before he could see the doubt that was surely visible in her face.

"Have you done this before?" he asked as she prepped the vials she'd collected on her desk, drawing the clear, unassuming liquids into the syringes.

"Of course," she said. The forced confidence in her voice came out airy, reminiscent of her mother. It wasn't the truth, far from it, but she wouldn't let him change his mind. She'd read about it, seen it done in the movies. Two shots to take him down. One shot to revive him. That's all.

"I need to unchain one of your hands," she said. "In case you vomit, you need to lay on your side." She fought her own hand from shaking as she unlocked the man's right cuff, breathing normally once she saw him do nothing but circle his wrist before he rolled onto his left side. Just turning over seemed painful as he failed to hide a wince.

Bulma tuned her walkie to the lieutenant's channel, setting it next to him on the bed. She moved quickly and deliberately to appear as confident as her body would let her. Though she averted her eyes as she pulled the translation device from his face and her own, afraid he might catch a hint of uncertainty in them.

Once the devices were safely stowed away inside the ship, she tied off his arm and picked up the first syringe—the first of two needles she hoped would be a life-giving death. His vein pulsed below the rubber tie. She could feel Vegeta watching her as the pressure continued to build in her chest as if her heart was the one about to be crushed.

"Onna," he said, as she held the shot between her fingers. What he said next, she couldn't understand. He closed his eyes, uttering something in a cadence that sounded like a prayer.

Bulma exhaled as she plunged the needles into his veins. One after the other, quickly, the soft presses of her thumb sent his beating heart into the otherworld. She didn't inhale again until the constant beep of the heart monitor slowed, finally erupted its long, dark tone, and his flicking tail went limp.

Her limbs felt like jelly, wading in a dark dream as she picked up the walkie to alert the lieutenant, tucking the needles in her pocket as she stood.

"Lieutenant!" she shouted into the walkie. "Come in!"

Another voice responded. It was the private. "He's on break, doc. What do you need?"

"What the fuck are you talking about? Why doesn't he have his walkie?" Of all the time the lieutenant spent standing guard outside the door, now was the moment he chose to go on break?

"Walkie's dark. Can't judge a man for wanting to shit in private," the boy responded.

"FUCK!" Bulma's voice emanated over the line, the first in a series of curses, urging the poor boy to run.

A few minutes was all the time they had—one chance to make this work. All of it would be for nothing if the lieutenant wasn't actually around to witness his death and resurrection. She couldn't pull the same stunt twice. It would be too obvious—especially getting more meds with the private in toe watching her every move. Not to mention, Vegeta wouldn't agree to play a role in a repeat performance if she failed. They would be back to square one.

The monitor's continuous tone ricocheted inside her skull as she paced the room and shouted into the walkie. Her own pulse beat hard against her eardrums like a pile driver. It felt like they would burst under the pressure.

_Breathe_, her logic tried to butt-in. Bulma checked her watch. It had been two minutes. Two more and his brain would start to suffocate.

If the lieutenant didn't arrive by then... a morbid, selfish thought crossed her mind. Could she leave him like that? Dead? This would all be over. He would be gone, no longer a pained prisoner. She'd go back to her life at Capsule Corp, never work for the military again, that's for damn sure. She'd spend her time on worthwhile technology to improve life on Earth. It would be like this whole thing never happened.

Only it wouldn't be like that, would it? She knew. His ghost would follow her, a shadow she could never be rid of, a constant reminder of what she'd done. He'd grind at her conscience and never let her forget the consequences of the weapons she made and the promise she didn't keep.

Less than a minute remained until there was no going back no matter what she chose: save him for now, or risk leaving him brain dead, or simply dead.

"Where the fuck are you, Hoffstead?" There was no reply. None came after her first exchange with the private. Granted she'd been yelling over the line, barely taking a breath for the past three and half minutes, not giving the men a chance to respond over the channel.

The contents of her dinner threatened to rise from her throat as she finally brought herself to glance from the corner of her eye at the alien's lifeless form. She couldn't do it. She couldn't be the one to let him die, not even as humanely as this. It was beneath him. And if there was anything Bulma Briefs was not, it was a quitter.

Bulma dropped the walkie to the floor, listening to the scratchy hiss over the line as she pulled the shot from her pocket.

She grabbed Vegeta by the shoulder and flipped him onto his back, feeling for the space between his rib cage where his heart lay dormant, waiting to be reawoken. Bulma ripped-off the cap of the syringe with her teeth, pressing her fingers between his ribs as she eyed the lifeless pallor of his face and hoped she wasn't too late.

"Come on, Vegeta," she begged. The fissures and cracks in her emotional levee splintered it to tiny shards as she sunk the needle into his chest.

* * *

Hoffstead barely zipped his pants before his short break was interrupted by the crash of the men's bathroom door slamming against the wall.

"Sir, the lady's screaming." The purple-haired private held out his walkie. A string of obscenities sounded from the earpiece at a feverish pitch. "Some sort of problem with the asset."

Hoffstead snatched the walkie from his man and darted past him into the hallway. If that thing was loose, his own head would be on a stake outside Strickland's office, if it wasn't about to be blown into a fine mist by a rampant alien menace.

The boy was on his heels as he rounded the corner and charged through two sets of armored doors. The woman's incessant cursing poured from the walkie like the cries of his men under fire. Then it stopped. The line went quiet, just as he skidded to a stop in front of the lab. Fuck, was she dead? Blasted to bits by the creature? Hoffstead pressed his trembling fingers against the access pad to unlock it as he pulled out his gun.

"Stay outside," he warned the private at his heels.

Hoffstead rushed inside the door, weapon at the ready, a mere second before he registered the flat-line of the monitors and witnessed the doctor stab the alien in the chest with a syringe—saw it jolt back to life with a hearty gasp, saw the doctor hugging it around its neck. Was she crying? The alien's right hand, free from its restraint, clung to the back of her head; its fingers entwined in her hair, holding her close as it gasped for air.

There was something amiss, yet Hoffstead tried his best to blind himself from it—to reconcile the conflicting feelings that stirred within himself as he watched the young doctor sob against the creature's shoulder while he strained to catch his breath. The monitors quietly beeped against the dampened walls as they embraced.

* * *

There was nothing—black, empty, nothing. Not the promised ancestral plain of light, the endless eternity in a world among gods, the so-called heavens. Everything he was forced to endure through the church's teachings as a child—their long lessons on sacrifice, strength and spirit—all ended in empty space.

One moment he was watching her, the earthling, the tension in her dainty fingers and the quiver of her pink lips before he felt the first needle sink into his arm: her promise to end him before she saved him. He felt his life force drain as the second needle bit his skin. Dying like that was easy, soft, like collapsing into a heavy sleep after a long, hard battle. Those last few seconds felt much like the serums, a euphoric slip from a hard reality. Only this time, it didn't end in the bright dreams of his brother.

There was nothing in this place he landed—no gods to meet him, no ancestors waiting like beacons of light to bring him home. Just vast darkness lay across an infinite plane, like the underground caverns of Planet Zebes, where his first solo mission left him lost in the tunnels, alone and starving for weeks, hidden away from even the glint of the faintest stars.

Except in this place, he couldn't hear his own voice as he shouted into an airless expanse, couldn't feel his limbs as he tried to swim through the thick black fog. Here, he was absent of even his own body, like he didn't exist at all but was completely conscious of the fact—trapped inside himself and screaming soundlessly into the abyss. He shouted harder, hoping for a voice, even if just his own, calling for anything to meet him in this hollow void. But the more he struggled, the more he felt like he was drowning, sinking deeper into its pit.

The dark didn't scare him. It was the emptiness that sent him to panic. It pounded at his soul, cracking it under a heavy weight like an ice cube. The feeling had permanence, like when he was a child watching Tarble's pod streak into oblivion. Or the first time he felt the brush of death, infected by feverish nightmares from a sentient pathogen on Planet Bilium. The Last Rites of the high priests chanted at his bedside in between their whispers of securing a new heir. Death was nothing more than unending suffocation, drowning alone in the ooze of his short life's humiliations as they played over and over while a breath was just out of reach.

Then, like a suction he was pulled, yanked back from the bleak emptiness of space. His lungs filled with air, and his eyes opened. Blue hair was all he could see. Her scent—sweet and earthy like the wildflowers that sprawled across the fields in his brother's visions—was all he could smell. The earthling girl clung to his neck as he tried to breathe. She was squealing into his ear, her hot breath panting against his neck. He couldn't understand the words. He couldn't even understand his own tremulous thoughts as they quaked inside his skull. Life rushed back to him in a wave of emotion that was out of his control. He couldn't help but wrap his free arm around the girl and inhale the air that lived between the silky strands of her hair. When she lifted her face, he saw her eyes were bloodshot, and liquid droplets fell from their corners to streak down her soft cheeks. She was brushing his face with her delicate fingers and sifting them through his hair. Foreign words sputtered from her lips in sniveling yips as the liquid continued to drip off her chin.

His power hadn't returned, like she promised. Everything felt the same, but worse. He felt emptier, like the backing to his soul had been ripped out. He'd been to the other side, and it was a hollow lie. The only glimmer of truth, of real substance tacking him down to reality was the flowery smell of her ocean of hair and the warm, salty droplets that touched his lips.

"Onna," he rasped as she touched her forehead to his. After a moment, her breath began to even out ahead of him as she tried to sit up. His arm was still clung around the back of her head, not letting her move. He didn't know what to feel. Too many swirling emotions let loose inside his veins, which felt like they were about to collapse under the pressure.

Everything he'd been taught, most of it he already suspected was bullshit, but now... what was left? Their ancestral promises were nothing but lies. There was nothing on the other side but a terrifying vacuum. His brother was here, not dead, not sacrificed for some grand, almighty purpose he was told was beyond his comprehension. He knew it all along. It was all garbage, all meant to keep the monarchs and the Saiyan people underfoot.

From the day Tarble was sent away, Vegeta questioned everything around him but his own power. The Saiyan public believed in him—the child that was born with a power unlike any their race had ever seen. He was perfect in his people's eyes. At least he _was_, should have been. Not anymore. Now he was nothing.

The earth woman, in the moment, was the only tangible part of existence that he could grasp. Her fingers in his hair and her forehead touching his sent a warm ripple of air through his lungs, allowing him to finally catch his breath. He was reluctant to release her as she finally pulled away to speak to the soldiers in the room—fearing he'd fall back into the murky pit without her, or be stabbed by one of their darts. But she stood between them. She guarded him against their drawn weapons much like she had the first time, imploring the men in the room on his behalf. He could recognize the fact now. She was more real than the Saiyan Gods—a living Earth goddess with porcelain skin and a heavenly scent that tethered him to reality like a lifeline. He focused on her, and her alone, trying to claw greater distance between his conscious and the plane he'd just escaped. As awareness slowly began to steady the whirlpool of his mind, he swore he smelled another Saiyan, if only faintly.

Vegeta looked under his hazy lids, listening to the woman's pitchy plea for his life. He watched the coward and a young, lavender-haired soldier he'd never seen before exit the lab and shut the door without administering a dart.


	5. The Pact

**Chapter 5: The Pact**

Bulma fastened the scouters over their faces the moment she felt the prince stir. "Vegeta! Anything yet?"

"No. Nothing, woman," he croaked. His scowl hardened as he glanced down at his leg that had been shot full of the ki-eating drugs around the clock for over a week.

"Got anymore bright ideas? Maybe try slitting my throat this time."

Bulma ignored the condescending remarks. Vegeta had a right to be bitter. What she feared about the serum was true: it was poison to mammals like him. A few missed doses wouldn't power them to freedom, as she'd hoped. Instead, they would have to continue to stick around and wait for him to heal—hope that his energy returned before Strickland did, hope the damage wasn't permanent.

The previous night's incident left a strange unease in the pit of her stomach. She hadn't expected the ruse to unfold that way, right down to the wire. But it did, and it worked for the most part. Though she could kick herself for her inability to keep-up the charade when Hoffstead finally burst into the lab. She cried like a child, hugged and petted the alien like a loved one, telling him she was sorry. If that didn't raise any red flags, then the lieutenant was denser than she thought. Losing her cool like that was reckless. Surely, Hoffstead suspected some sort of scheme. At the very least, he knew she cared for Vegeta more than the scientist should. And knowing him, he'd report her actions up the pipeline without a second thought.

If that that wasn't enough, Vegeta's own behavior had driven her emotions into a tailspin, churning up a feeling that bordered dangerously on affection. He came back to life in a daze. A peculiar fog enveloped his normally sharp and vicious persona. At first, her mind jumped to brain damage. Though he'd only been without oxygen for four minutes, not quite long enough to cause any permanent harm, statistically speaking. No, he was all there, he was just... away—maybe delirious from the cocktail of conflicting substances in his system. Yet something in the wide, inky depths of his eyes had almost read like fear.

After the lieutenant and the boy left, she tried to place the pink device over his brow. It would likely be the first and last opportunity she'd have to hash out a trip to the otherworld firsthand. But he shook his head and mutely pressed his lips together, as if the sound of his own voice would shatter his reality. Instead, he grabbed her by the wrist with his free hand and tugged, wordlessly coercing her to move closer. The habitual bend of his brows lifted in a look of need.

Bulma hopped-up to sit on the edge of the bed. She wanted to say something to make him feel better, but her words would be meaningless without the eyepieces.

The prince pulled on her wrist again, hard enough to indicate that he wanted her to lay down. It was surprising. From their interactions over the past week, she wouldn't think the man capable of admitting the need to take comfort in another person. At first it felt like all the times she was ill as a child and her mother would hold her in her lap, lulling her feverish form into gentle sleep with her head pressed against her chest. Even some battle-hardened superman would surely seek that kind of comfort now and again, wouldn't he?

As she settled against his warm body, he buried his face in her hair, his breath catching as he inhaled in small, stagnated gasps against the back of her neck. The arm she freed wrapped around her waist, gripping her tightly to his chest, and his tail snaked its way over her hips. As much as she tried to stomp it down, she couldn't help but feel a fluttering electricity sweep up her spine. This wasn't the parental comfort she sought from her mother in her sickest days. No... this felt like the first time she cuddled against Yamcha. The warm crush of infatuation alerted every nerve as she felt the hot breath of the boy beside her tingle against her skin. She laid there like a dutiful doll, letting the sensation of Vegeta's uneven breaths rake her nerves for hours until they finally leveled-out into the even waves of sleep.

Despite the long, restless night wrapped-up next to him, today he was alert and alive, back to his savage self, as if the whole affair had been a dream. Either he didn't remember, or his ego was in denial. It was expected, his refusal to admit that the near-death experience spooked him into squeezing her like a security blanket. As far as she could tell, Vegeta was as insecure as a high school freshman when it came to his pride. In their few short conversations, he spoke to her like she was mentally challenged. Yet last night he sought her out as something to hold tight when life got dicey.

Now, a vicious sneer pinched his face. Cursed her with a look of criminal failure, like she botched the job on purpose.

"I don't know how long it will take to get your ki back. Be patient. We have some time," she implored him.

There was no failure worthy of the blame he spat in her direction. Her original plan was working! Hoffstead agreed to stop the doses. If he didn't recover in time, then she would enlist Goku's help. She would now. Vegeta had trusted her with his life. She had no choice but to follow through at all costs, even if the outcome could be losing them both, not to mention her own freedom.

"Vegeta," she said, trying to wrest an understanding from the prince's hostile visage, "after I get you out of here—and I will get you out of here—then I'll take you to him, and to the ship. But, I need you promise me two things first."

"More promises? What the fuck else can you take from me?" His words bit her screen.

She knew she'd been asking a lot of him, likely even given some lenience from the prince's sharp tongue in his compromised position. But from where she sat now, Vegeta didn't have a choice and had everything to gain by continuing to comply to her demands. If he could keep his promises, they both might just get out of this intact.

"The first one is easy." Bulma said. "I just ask that you don't hurt anyone that doesn't deserve it. Leave the planet and innocent people intact."

It was a no brainer that the man was planning revenge. His scars said it all. He was an empire's warring prince, and he was powerful and mean. Just how far his vengeance extended was the million-zeni question. Maybe Goku would prove handy. Not in his usual way, but through the prince's favor. Goku wouldn't let his brother blast people to smithereens on the heels of his departure.

"No one is innocent. You are naïve," Vegeta spat.

"Wrong answer. I need your word."

"Woman, even if I wanted to turn your planet into space dust, I couldn't in this condition. This isn't working." Though that soldier hadn't shot him in a day, his ki was as weak as a nightlight, his body barely a shadow of its former strength. His joints still ached in a feverish chill, making every movement feel wooden. "I need food. Real food. Not this juice you call sustenance." Vegeta glared at the IV bag of fluids that fed him. "And I need to train."

"Train?" Bulma arched a questioning brow. "I can get you food. But what do you mean by train?"

The prince rolled his eyes. "Move, you moron. I've been chained to a bed for ten rotations of this planet! Your gravity is pathetic. On top of losing my ki, I'm losing my strength."

"You mean let you loose inside the lab? You may be too sick to destroy a planet right now, but you can kill _me_, easily." Bulma cast a suspicious stare at her captive.

Despite his needy gestures the night before, she didn't trust him not to kill her with his bare hands. In fact, his embarrassment over the whole ordeal only seemed to validate her concerns. His scowl was bitter and threatening. The muscles of his face refused to admit that he held none of the cards, not as long as he was chained. But if she let him go—even without his ki, he was stronger than she was. And he had no allegiance to anyone but himself; that much was obvious in the acrimonious tone he'd used when he claimed his own people wouldn't negotiate for his life. "How can I trust you won't hurt me the second I unchain you?"

The prince lifted his noble chin and stared at her, unblinking. "Why should I promise such a thing to my captor? This was all your doing. Without me, the fate of my empire might be sealed by your people. _They_ did this to me!"

It wasn't clear if Vegeta knew that she was the direct cause of his condition, or if he was tossing blame at earthlings in general, her being among them. She guessed the latter, hoped for it. If Vegeta really knew that she invented the anti-ki darts, among worse weapons, her situation could become quite complicated. Whatever closeness he sought from her last night evaporated faster than a drip of water on a hot stone.

Bulma sat back in her chair and crossed her arms, tapping her finger to her bicep. Twice now she saved him. Fucking twice! And _he_ was the one that needed _her!_ She looked down on the imprisoned, haughty prince. He was at her mercy. There was no way she would set him free in the lab without agreeing to a few terms and conditions. So she sat and waited, watching his powerless ego give way.

"Fine. Let me free, and I'll let you live," he acquiesced with a roll of his eyes before he shot his dark pupils on her again. "But if I find that my people have met destruction due to your untimely imprisonment of their prince and protector, I will be back for retribution."

Bulma waved a flippant hand. "If, as you say, your people have been destroyed and you go gallivanting off to the front lines, won't your fate be the same as theirs?"

"Maybe," the prince shrugged. "It would be an honorable death for a warrior, if that is my fate. Though, nothing changes for you. This planet will meet something far worse. You have no choice. Let me go, or meet the wrath of the Colds. Get me my powers, and I will spare your planet for now. You have my word."

His word. It's what she wanted, but it wasn't enough. Bulma hadn't moved from her position, looking down at the prince, unconvinced by the scathing glare and peevish tone with which he delivered his pledge.

There was also the second matter, something else she needed to secure from him. Since he had agreed to die on her table, and she was still in control of his destiny so long as he was tethered, maybe this request wouldn't seem so outrageous... but who the hell was she kidding?

He shook a chained wrist. "What's the fucking hold up?"

"Vegeta, if I set you free, I'm as good as dead." Bulma's face fell as the reality of her situation set in. It was something she'd been thinking about, but admitting it out loud made it concrete in her mind. Freeing him amounted to treason. She'd be tried in the army's courts. Its punishment awaited her: a life sentence or death. Strickland would see to it personally that she suffered.

"I'm coming with you," she said. This thought wasn't new. She'd spent the past few days letting it set in and arrest her typically logical judgement. But it made some sense. Didn't it? She'd always wanted to go off-planet. Who better to travel with than an intergalactic prince? If she could trust him not to murder her, of course. "If I set you free, you will take me with you on my father's ship. I can pilot it, make repairs–"

"No," was his response. It was sharp and definite. He didn't even frown, just looked at her with the flattened guise of a strict parent.

"Why not? I'm letting you go and giving you a ship. What are you going to do for me?"

"Not kill you," he blinked, matter of fact.

"Yeah, okay, you said that. But I'll be as good as dead anyway if I let you go! Take me with you to your planet."

"Are you deaf? I'm not going home. I'm going to war. Even if I sent you to my planet, a puny little earthling like you would never be permitted inside the capital as anything more than a slave. So unless you want to spend your miserable life in a hot desert eating insects."

Bulma again crossed her arms in defiance. He would concede, she knew. He was sick, weak, and desperate. As long as he was chained, she had him wrapped around her little finger. But the second she let him loose—well, that could spell death, if not by him, then by Strickland.

"Fine..." he grumbled. "I will take you to the nearest trade planet. But that's as far as you go."

"How do I know you aren't lying?"

"Trust me, woman. I'm a prince. My word is my honor. But if you insist on something binding, unchain me, and I'll show you."

Depositing her at some merchant planet wasn't exactly what she had in mind, but at least it was a compromise. She wasn't a stranger to traveling alone. Hell, she could convince Goku to tag along like their adventures when they were kids. Vegeta wanted meet him anyway.

Bulma bit her lip, eyeing the restraints that bound him, kept him weak. It was now or never. If she wanted him to live, she would have to set him free at some point. That was the goal, wasn't it? She wasn't a killer or a bystander to torture and death. All along, this was the plan. They'd been through so much already to save him. Angry, murderous, powerful as he seemed, he was still the same person that trusted her until now—that clung to her in an existential crisis, whispering _Onna, Onna_ against her neck as he fell asleep. Bulma held that thought as she took a cuff in her hand and pulled her set of keys from her pocket. She unchained him, set him free.

Vegeta sat up in bed with a groaning effort. He yanked the banana bag from his veins and stripped the monitors from his chest before he stretched his arms overhead, wincing as he twisted his limbs around his back and cracked every joint from his neck to his knuckles. He lifted the blanket that covered his legs and ripped out the catheter like it was nothing, chucking it and the bag of attached fluids to the floor with a sharp grunt before he stood up—completely nude and without a hint of shame. A fierce blush turned Bulma's fair skin red as she spun away, dashing for the cabinets that held clean scrubs.

"Here, put this on." she said, tossing a pair of blue scrubs in his direction. She waited, reading his complaints on her screen as he lamented the baggy, cotton slacks from behind her shoulder.

The shirt was left on the floor, and the pants he wore low, too low to account for his tail. The sculpted V of his low abdomen in full view above the waistband. Thankfully he wrapped his tail around his hips like a belt, providing some semblance of decency.

It was strange, him being free, standing in front of her. Without her heels, he was about her height. Though his thick, upswept hair made him appear taller. Suddenly, she was aware of her own disheveled state and yearned for her own wardrobe, forced to wear baggy scrubs herself with her only outfit trashed in his blood.

Bulma racked her mind for anything to shake his gaze as he eyed her up and down. He was taking her in with an unrelenting stare, his black eyes roving her frame like he was sizing-up his prey.

"So," she said, trying to direct his attention back to her face. "What were you going to show me? You got a contract hidden in that mane of yours?"

A sadistic smile crept over the prince's lips as he extended his arm. Palm first, his hand outstretched before her. Light sparked from the center—a ball of magenta ki that materialized in an instant, aimed right at her chest.

A sudden, icy panic swept through her core as Bulma staggered backwards. Her throat tightened, like she was being choked as she stared with wide, fearful eyes at the sphere of energy that danced in his hand. _He fucking lied_. He had his powers, and he was going use them to kill her.

"Vegeta!" she yelped, a strangled cry she could barely hear over the thump of her heavy pulse, her heart kicking against her chest like it was trying to escape its cage.

The life that was supposed to flash before her never did. That maybe she deserved this was the only fleeting thought that crossed her mind as her eyes darted between the ki-ball and the prince's depraved smirk. But what if he killed the rest of them too, not just the base, but the citizens? She'd be to blame as much as Strickland, maybe more. How could she be so stupid? Of course this is what he'd been planning all along.

"Hurry up. This is all I have." he snapped, interrupting the racing thoughts of her impending doom. The dark grin dissolved from his face as his features hardened. "Your hand, woman!"

Bulma stared point blank as she tried to digest what he said. She was not about to die? He wanted her hand?

She hesitantly outstretched her own arm and placed her shaking palm over the dancing ball of energy, pressing it into his. His fingers entwined around hers as their hands began to glow. The magenta light emanated through the skin at the center of his palm and shined through her own. It was warm, kinetic, causing every tiny hair to lift along her arm.

"You swear to get me to my brother? You swear to get us to that ship?" Though what he asked sounded more like declarations than questions, Bulma nodded. A pact, he was making a pact?

"Then I swear I will not leave you here," he said.

"Or kill any innocent people," she added.

"Fine, whatever," Vegeta gritted through his teeth.

He closed his eyes and focused his ki. A sharp, searing heat blasted through the center of her palm in a beam, a narrow laser of pinkish light that shot out the backs of their hands. It pierced through her flesh like a hot fire iron. She cringed at the pain, but she didn't pull away. When the light dissipated and their hands untwined, she stared into the center of her scorched palm. It was branded: a pink scar of swirling tendrils that spiraled out from the glowing center like a galaxy.

"Where I'm from, it's a sacred bond," he explained. "If either of us negates our oaths or dies before they are fulfilled, we will both forfeit our afterlives in the otherworld. Eternity tied in the in-between. Trust me, it's not a place I'd like to return."

The woman looked up from the raw burn that was already beginning to blister. If it was painful, she was trying to hide it, slipping her clenched fist inside the pocket of her coat, turning her watery focus to him instead.

"Is that what you're afraid of? The afterlife?" she asked. "What happened when you were out?"

So much for hoping she'd let the incident slide. Gods, he felt pathetic enough already for his momentary weakness; he didn't need reminding.

He could bury down fear as well as he could mow down his opponents, but something about his dip into the netherworld left a deep, empty pit where the certainties of his life once resided. The clear course had been drained dry. At the time, he sought to fill the gap with the only familiar thing within reach: her.

At least by now, the drugs had worn off and he didn't feel so vulnerable to the chaos that clawed at his soul. A sense of purpose flooded back into the forefront. So what if there was nothing after this life? Becoming an eternal god was off the table. So what? That didn't change anything. He would still ascend to legendary power in this life, ensure his race's rule over the universe with himself at the helm. If he couldn't avoid the eternal night that awaited him in death, he would rest with the knowledge that he was the most powerful being to ever grace the galaxies. His legacy would not be forgotten.

He wanted to slay the soothing memory of burrowing against the woman like a useless infant, but the very air he breathed in this stuffy prison was filled with her scent. Poison in their own way, the earthling's pheromones seeped into his skull and dulled his senses. They distracted him from his pointed focus and left him susceptible to debasing himself and his race in the worst way he could imagine: hosting desire for a fragile creature like her.

She was giving him the same pitiful look of concern his nursemaid would when he'd wake-up screaming from a fit of nightmares as a cub. He half expected the earthling to hold him and pet his head like that low-born nanny used to do.

There was nothing to explain to the girl. It was just the drugs, or it was Tarble's soft countenance that leached his mind. Nothing more. He hadn't needed her, not really.

"I'm not afraid of anything, earthling. You drugged me into acting like a little bitch. That's what happened. But if you care to test a theory, I know one way to find out."

He formed his hand into the shape of one of her weapons as he roughly pressed his index finger under her chin, tipping her head backward. But the woman merely frowned down the line of her face and slapped his hand away from her neck.

"So then," she said. "Purgatory."

With her good hand on her hip, she glanced around their enclosure. "You're sure we're not already there?"

He'd admit she had some fight in her for a frail, little earthling. Maybe she didn't believe in the sacred oath in which she participated, but it didn't matter. He didn't believe in the practice either. To him, it was just symbolic—a reminder to himself that she let him free. Despite that even as weak as he was, she knew that he could kill her if he wanted. He'd killed thousands of beings before, many that boasted far less severe crimes against a Saiyan royal than she'd committed. Many he killed just for sport. Yet, she was here, smiling, her palm scorched through the center with his ki—a promise that, if it was true, would tie them forever to the netherworld if either of them failed to keep it.

"Now," Vegeta said with a tip of his head. "About that food."

* * *

"What the hell is this?" Vegeta glared down at the c-rations that Bulma set before him. Canned corned beef and a hardtack biscuit. It wasn't much, but it was a start.

"Food," she said. "This isn't the Ritz Carlton, Vegeta. Shut up and eat!"

The Saiyan Prince frowned as he reluctantly shoveled her paltry dinner into his mouth. Tomorrow, she promised, she would track down better food in the mess hall. After all, it would give her the opportunity to scope out the challenges that lay ahead of them to form a plan of attack.

"There's something else we should consider," Bulma said, her back to the prince as she dug through her med kit searching for painkillers, ointment, bandages, anything to abate the throbbing burn in the center of her palm. "I need to chain you back up, twice a day, for a few minutes."

"Puck dat," he said, cheeks full of meat.

"Just trust me you idiot." She glanced over her shoulder. "The lieutenant is predictable. He visits every twelve hours, less than a minute. Pretend that you're ill, and he'll leave. Then I'll unchain you again."

Vegeta eyed her as he ate. "Fine. But I keep the keys, not you."

"How are you going to manage to unchain yourself?" she asked.

His tail swept out from behind him. Flicking the tip, he smirked.

"Fine," Bulma agreed. She threaded the key ring of his cuffs over the soft fur of his tail.

* * *

Bulma rubbed the kink in her neck as she shot up from the hard cot with a jolt. Vegeta was making a racket as he rummaged through the cupboards, chucking hard drives and cables across the floor with careless disregard.

"What the hell are you doing?" she asked after she fit the translation device across a groggy eye.

"You don't have any weights?"

"Weights for what?"

"Training," he said as if it was obvious.

"Does this look like a gym to you? You were dead just a day ago. Why don't you give your heart a rest? We have plenty of time." At least she hoped that was true. They had two and a half weeks to prepare. Regardless, it wouldn't do him any good to push himself before he was ready.

"Why don't you give your mouth a rest and go fetch me some breakfast," he snapped.

Bulma groaned as she roused herself from her cot to pull on her lab coat. "Prince fucking charming, do I look like the help?" she muttered loud enough to register on his screen.

Before she took off her device and radioed the lieutenant to open the door, Bulma turned back to him, arms crossed. "I'm not going anywhere until you lay down and chain yourself up. I can't have you roaming the lab when I'm gone in case Hoffstead decides to check-in."

Vegeta stopped digging in the cabinets to cast a sour look over his shoulder. When it was clear that she wasn't moving until the cuffs clicked, he growled and made his way to the bed.

A part of her applauded her ability to control the prick of all Saiyans. Maybe traveling with him wouldn't prove so difficult after all. Matching his bravado seemed to work wonders. She could temper his mountain of ego with a biting comment and a stern glare.

Though as she watched him dutifully imprison himself, locking the cold chains around his limbs, the impossible pressure of her control over his fate crept in again. It sunk whatever optimistic outcome she imagined in her head, bogged it down with all the what-ifs her brilliant mind could conjure: the uncertainty of Vegeta's ki ever returning, Hoffstead tattling about her show of affection, Goku's potential involvement, or her own father's for that matter if they ever decrypted their communications. Even the fate of the purple-haired private who so stupidly came traipsing into the room against his orders weighed heavily on her mind.

Vegeta stared at her from his compromised position on the bed. "Tick-tock, earthling."

His gravelly voice nipped her attention. Stomping over to his bedside, she snatched the device from his grouchy face before she left to retrieve his breakfast.

* * *

Bulma walked alongside Private Trunks through the corridors of the Weapons R&D wing, trying not to look suspicious as she took note of the arrangement of the guards that lined the halls. There were more than she saw the other day.

"What's with the extra security, Trunks?" she asked, already suspecting the answer. The general clearly had no faith in his lieutenant now that the asset was serum-free. Twice as many young men stood feet apart, armed to the teeth with guns, both ki-guns and real guns. They all looked the same. The armor surrounding their young faces suppressed their humanness, all dutiful statues that stood at attention, gripping their powerful weapons and waiting for an attack.

"Your performance put the higher-ups on edge," he smirked. Again, the boy winked.

_Performance?_ A flush heated her face at his word choice. How much did the private really know? The sly looks and suspicious comments were enough to assume that he knew exactly what she was up to that night in the medical wing. But she wasn't going to prod him and risk giving away any hint that the crisis was a self-made ploy.

Hoffstead, too, seemed to have ignored the painful gaps in her scheme, showing no indication yet that he suspected anything amiss in her blatant show of devotion to her pet project.

Bulma and the private exited the building silently, side by side. She squinted her eyes against the sun as he led her down the paved walkways toward the mess hall.

"What happened to your hand?" he asked, watching her raise a bandaged palm over her brow to shade her vision.

"Nothing, just a little cut." She brushed off his question with a small wave.

The fresh scent of the grassy, open courtyards was a much-needed reprieve from the sweat and sickness of her chamber, until heaviness sunk her gut again. All around her, soldiers darted, some in strict formations going about their training, some casually wandering to and fro on break. All of them were armed with the weapons she created. And the loud, rambunctious mess hall was a nightmare compared to the lab's soundproofing. Voices chased one another in a wall of shouts that charged her anxiety.

It felt like every soldiers' eyes were on her. She looked out of place in her white lab coat and rumpled scrubs. Bulma ignored their stares as she and Trunks led themselves through the thick masses to collect food. It was much better than the c-rations she was provided by Hoffstead. This was food, real food: gravy drenched meats, warm bread, steamed vegetables and chocolate desserts. Bulma collected as much as she possibly could fit on her tray, ignoring the private's amused glances as she packed it all into to-go boxes.

"Hungry, Doctor?" A mischievous smile spread across his lips. "Looks like you have enough to feed a whole squad."

"I'm on my period." she answered, trying to shut the boy up without any more questions.

He screwed up his face the way most men do when that topic is breached. After helping her package up the food, he led her out of the mess hall without another peep, but he kept glancing at her with a curious look that made her squirm. The private was after something, and it was hard to discern what. She wasn't so sure that she wanted to know.

As they walked along the paths that crisscrossed the courtyard, Bulma felt the soldier continue to stare from the corners of his eyes, like he had something to say and was waiting for the right moment. Once two passing soldiers were out of range, he finally leaned in to whisper in Bulma's ear, "What's he like?"

"Who?" For a split second, she had no honest idea who the private was asking about until it dawned on her at the exact moment he said it.

"Ve..uh..the asset," he stuttered.

She swore he almost said Vegeta's name, but that was impossible. She must be going nuts under the stress and lack of sleep. Regardless, his rebelliousness would get him killed. He'd already disobeyed Hoffstead's orders by entering the lab. Now he was fishing for more information? The boy clearly had no wits about him.

Bulma snatched the soldier by the strap of his bullet proof vest and dragged him off the path, away from the soldiers and military personnel, toward a narrow space between two buildings. She refused to be responsible for yet another man's wellbeing.

A harsh, parental tone overtook her as Bulma fisted the strap of his vest, yanking his face toward her as she grumbled through her teeth, "If you value your life, private, you will play dumb."

Trunks nervously rubbed the back of his neck, the same way Goku did whenever he opened his mouth without thinking. It struck her that lot of the boy's mannerisms reminded her of Goku. He was bouncy and good natured, a grin plastered to his face even as she scolded him.

"What possessed you to enter that lab in the first place?" she asked. "You know that if he hasn't already, Hoffstead will tell the general you were there, right?"

"I know," he said a bit sheepishly. "But..." His nervous smile faltered, and his brows pinched together in a look that was almost sentimental. "I just wanted to see him once."

Maybe he was just a kid whose curiosity got the better of him. Yet, the way his voice dipped and cracked expressed something more complex than wanting a glimpse of the boogeyman. What it meant, she couldn't venture a guess, but she couldn't look at his apologetic features without feeling a little guilty for snapping at him.

"I'm sorry, Trunks." Bulma let go of his vest and stepped back, pulling at the lapels of her frumpy lab coat. "The less you know, the better, so don't ask me any more questions. Okay? I can't be responsible for you getting into trouble."

"Okay, doc," he agreed, straightening his posture as he forced a smile.

They reversed their path back through R&D and the thick arrangement of sentries that separated herself and Vegeta from freedom.

Hoffstead was still standing guard at the lab entrance where Private Trunks deposited her.

"Doctor," he said. He looked down at her impassively. "A full report on the asset is needed."

_Shit!_ How could she be so stupid? Of course they'd need medical reports, and Vegeta wasn't wearing any monitors. Even if she outfitted a mobile unit on him, the data would show that he was clearly moving about the room. Hiding his elevated heart rate for his training, whatever that entailed, would require her to fake the data intake to the system. She could rig the standing monitors, maybe program a loop—run the past few days leading up to the incident over and over and hope they wouldn't catch the pattern.

"Still incapacitated, lieutenant," she lied. "I'll have a full report for you in the evening if anything changes."

An inexplicable urgency to get back to Vegeta had been steadily growing from the moment she stepped foot outside the lab. Now that she had plenty of work to do, her anxiety hit a new peak.

Bulma quickly slipped back inside her cage, food in hand, where the Saiyan Prince would be waiting. Or should have been—when she entered the room, he was nowhere in sight. The bed was empty, and the floor was still covered in the mess of cords he made earlier, but no sign of the alien.

"Vegeta?" Bulma called. Her voice lilted with unease as she spun in a circle. He couldn't have vanished.

A shadow flittered against the wall above her head, and she felt a soft tussle of her hair. Bulma looked up at the tin ventilation ducts that ran across the ceiling. The only thing she could see from below was his long, furry tail hanging over the edge. Idiot. She grabbed it and yanked it like the string of a light switch.

The prince hissed out a foreign curse and leapt soundlessly to the floor below, agile as a jungle cat. Though before he could get too angry, she shoved the bag of food into his hands. This was going to be a long couple of weeks now that she had two men to protect against their own stupidity.

Vegeta bent his face into the bag, inhaling with a force. When he lifted his eyes to meet hers, a grin crossed his lips, an honest to gods' smile. Freedom and food: if that wasn't the way to tame a Saiyan, Bulma didn't know what was.

He sat on top of her desk, food splayed out between them. Despite that his ki was still a drip of its previous flood of power, he was in good spirits now with containers of warm food set around him. The moment he started piling the hot meal into his mouth, he became almost amenable... almost.

He spoke to her between bites, mostly bragging, recounting tales that proved his feats of strength and ninja-like prowess—dangerous missions he was regularly sent on by his father, the king, and his council of priests. She wasn't squeamish, but the fact that he talked about tearing beating hearts from the chests of rebel leaders, as if these acts were equivalent to her academic awards and doctorates, was unnerving. Bulma felt her stomach sour with every vivid detail.

It seemed the savage prince led a savage life. The stories he told portrayed one close call after another, a hair's breadth away from death with every morbid adventure that was mapped across his skin. All those scars, each one was accompanied by a deadly tale. He was always outnumbered, underprepared, and up against superior technology. Countless times, the prince slipped through the clutches of a cosmic reaper on his ki alone. He had more lives than a cat.

"Vegeta, if you're the only heir to the throne, why does your father keep risking your life on these missions?" Bulma asked. To her, it seemed odd that the race's only legacy wasn't sent on more public, grandiose battles as opposed to the clandestine, spy-novel-on-steroids, suicide missions he described.

"Because I have a reputation. Unlike you, fool, most people fear me. I'm the strongest warrior our race has ever born." He cast her a wicked smile before he took another bite, all pumped-up on meat and his own ego.

"That, and I think the king wants to keep me off planet as much as possible. Quell any rumors. I am not exactly on good terms with the church's council. They're pushing to have me excommunicated, even executed on one occasion." He laughed and shook his head as if reminiscing on some stupid high school drama.

"Sending me off planet to crush rebellions is a political move. The more I win, the less they can make their case with the public on my side. No matter how hard they try to portray me as a heretic, they can't deny the tangible proof of my power."

The conversation was killing her appetite. She'd been pushing vegetables around with a fork as Vegeta told her about his life. It was fucked-up in so many ways he didn't seem to realize.

She felt grateful that Goku was sent away. What for, she didn't know. She wanted to ask, but at the moment, she was far more curious about the maniac sitting before her. The ivory points of his canines stood out against the dimly lit room and made him look a little crazy when he smiled. His life was a horrible car wreck, and it was hard to look away.

"What did you do to make them want to kill you?"

"What didn't I do?" he shrugged. "I'm not what you'd call a firm believer in their reverent bullshit. All they want are more and more riches and control over the empire. Rightfully, they worry they'll lose that power once I'm crowned. I don't doubt that they incited some of those rebellions themselves, or at least sabotaged them. Gave the king bad intel hoping I'd be killed."

A part of her wondered if he wasn't sabotaged to crash here too, strand him here like they did to Goku. Maybe there wasn't a storm. The ship's failure made sense. But the com-link on his device, the jam on that was odd, like he'd been blocked from the network. It made her feel better that she didn't try to fix it. Who knew what his people would do to Earth if he contacted them? Maybe they'd try to be rid of the whole planet, knowing he was here and still alive.

He pressed himself off the desk to stretch his arms overhead, twisting his torso around to crack his back while he continued musing over his heresy against the Saiyan Church, like it was all just a practical joke. "Oh, how I will revel in showing them the errs of their ways when I return with Lord Frieza's head."

The excitable tone with which he spoke, punctuated by mischievous grins, ran counter to the cold vengeance he sought against anyone and everyone who dared cross him. He liked killing. He was a madman, a product of his environment. He had all of Goku's strength, but none of his compassion.

Still, she was mesmerized by the man. He was smart and stubborn, with a tenacious will that couldn't be tempered even when the odds were stacked against him. A lot like herself, in a way.

"Consider yourself lucky, little earthling. I don't let just anyone get away with crimes against the crown."

Bulma swallowed the urge to yelp when suddenly, faster than she could blink, the prince was bent over her. One hand on each arm of her chair, his face was inches away with that impudent smirk spread across his features. She hadn't even seen him move.

Then just as fast, he snatched her up. She felt her eyes grow wide and fought to wrestle any sign of fear from her face when she realized she was cradled in his arms like a newlywed.

"You don't weigh much, do you?" He sounded disappointed as he tossed her high into the air. This time eliciting a stray squeal from her throat as her limbs flailed from feet above his head before he caught her. Instinctively, Bulma clung to his neck to prevent a second throw.

"What the hell are you doing?" she screamed. "Put me down!"

Vegeta snickered, seemingly thrilled to finally extort a sliver of fear from her, but he obeyed nonetheless, dropping his arm from under her knees, letting her feet feel the security of the floor below. But the prince's hand on her hip lingered for a moment that felt long enough to freeze time. His face was tipped close enough that she could almost see the lighter brown of his irises against the absolute blackness of his pupils. Bulma's gaze involuntarily flicked down from his eyes to his lips that seemed to have abandoned their smartass display, the tips of his ivory fangs peeking out from behind them.

In a daze, she watched his mouth form foreign words before her brain remembered to read the translation.

"You can let go now princess," he'd said.

His hand slipping away from her hip brought her to her senses, not realizing her own fingers still clung to the back of his neck in a white-knuckled grip. Bulma snapped them to her sides and spun back to the room, trying to punish the feelings that were riotously flipping her stomach in a way she hadn't felt since she was a teen. _What in Kami's name were you thinking, Bulma? Were you going to kiss that madman?_


	6. The Earth Girl

**Chapter 6: The Earth Girl**

Vegeta's eyes fluttered open inside his brother's memories. They were in her bedroom. It was barely dawn. Birds chirped outside the window, and the sun spread its light over his brother's skin, waking him gently. She was snoring. Her limbs spread out across a bed that sat next to where he slept on a floor mat. His brother stood and stretched, basking in the energy of the Earth's morning star. She looked peaceful, despite the loud snorts that escaped her throat and nasal passages. Sleepiness seeped back into his head just looking at her. He wanted nothing more than to fall back to dreaming, curled against the warmth of another being. His baby brother climbed into bed and laid down, cuddled between her thighs and dozed off again.

When Vegeta woke from Tarble's memory to the recognizable ceiling of their prison, he flung his legs, expecting to feel the cold jolt of his chains, but there was nothing. He wasn't restrained. Cool concrete stretched under his limbs in the spot where he'd passed out after long hours of training. Sitting up, he took in his surroundings. She was there sleeping, splayed out across her cot, one leg dangling off the side, snoring just like his dream.

The sore muscles and aching joints from his first workout in gods knew how long made it a chore to even stand, that and the side effects of the ever-lingering serum. His hollow stomach rumbled. As decent as the food was under the circumstances, it could hardly be considered a meal. He needed more, much more, and he needed to do it all over again: eat, train, eat, train, sleep—stoke the glowing ember of his ki until it became a raging inferno, blast this place to hell and never look back.

Vegeta crossed his arms and looked down at the woman's prone form, her limbs flung every which way, hair matted beneath her head and lips parted to release the little snorts that caught in her throat.

Watching her sleep, a strange feeling stirred alongside pangs of hunger, poking and prodding at him, like puzzling together pieces of intel before a mission. It begged him to wake her just to what... to talk? That couldn't be it. What did the earthling have to say that he could possibly want to know? Besides obtaining more intel about Tarble or their escape plans, he couldn't care less. But he couldn't help himself.

Yesterday, he'd babbled on and on to the earthling about his life without filter. He told her all about the Saiyan culture, his missions, even his precarious relationship with the church and the queen and king. He was aware of himself conversing, but never felt the urge to shut it down. In one afternoon, he traded more words with her than he'd accumulated throughout his entire life. Was this what Tarble was like? Chatty? Sociable? Gods, he felt pathetic... but he felt better talking to her, didn't he? Less chaotic, less anxious, almost content?... No, Tarble must be an idiot.

His brother's mind, ever-present, bubbled in the back of his skull, taking advantage of his weakened state to infect his stupid, affable spirit into his head. It nudged him, teased him. Tarble's fondness for the girl was clear. Friend, she called him? If that's what a friend was, just hours of aimless chit-chat, it was a waste of his time.

Of course, she'd have to come with him now, even though she was useless in every conceivable way. Physically weak and defenseless, she didn't even weigh enough to provide any resistance for training. And all her boasting about flying and fixing ships amounted to pointless nonsense. He spent his whole life maintaining the hunks of garbage his leaders excused as ships as he traveled the galaxies. He didn't need any help. A pointless burden, that's what she amounted to—just a means to an end.

Yet, that wasn't all, he knew. She was a weakness. His sensitive nose couldn't be rid of her scent if he'd plugged it. And the color of her hair tempted him like Tarble's visions, the hues of it changing under the room's lights the same way the sun reflected off Earth's oceans. Even as he trained, his frayed mind homed-in on her movements about the room, distracted by the back of her head, defining the different shades in each of the colorful strands that washed over her shoulders as they morphed from a bright turquoise to a deep-sea blue with every little motion. Though, admiring her hair was nothing compared to his imaginings of what the rest of her looked like beneath the baggy clothes.

As intoxicating as her presence was, she was still a human, a frail little thing from a small, feeble planet. Rebelling against the Saiyan Church was one thing, cavorting with a tiny earthling was another. He may not agree to much of make-believe traditions to which the Saiyan's prescribed. However, blood and lineage was not just the highest regarded value they held, it was simple science. Strength bred strength. The purity of his house only proved that. The only thing Tarble proved, if the woman's stories about him were true, was that their power wasn't necessarily delivered en masse at birth. That for some, good breeding awoke slowly over time.

Even his own power had increased tenfold since his readings at birth—most of it beaten into him as a kid, especially after his brother's departure. Displays of affection, attachment of any kind weren't tolerated among the elites, especially not among royals. It was a sin against their evolution that would only hold them back, so it was said.

As much as he dreaded a future with a devout daughter of a Sacred House as his queen, it was how they survived—how their race continued its ascension, breeding ever more powerful kin.

After waking up from Tarble's dream, his state of mind was bog of murky thoughts. He couldn't sift the earthling out. She was a powerful little thing, in her own way, wasn't she? Riding on confidence and her self-proclaimed smarts, she managed to gain his attention, reduce him to a blathering mess. His knees felt weak, like they'd bend with a will of their own just to kneel beside her bed and gently shake her awake.

_Stop it! Don't be a fool. Not again._ Vegeta thrashed his head back and forth, trying to shake loose the urge to engage the girl. He was bound to her for the foreseeable future, until they crossed a trade planet where he could wipe his branded hand of all responsibility.

Despite his skepticism of the religious practice that was consecrated across their palms, there were some aspects of the faith that he no longer cared to test. Namely, the threat of being trapped for an eternity in that soundless, lightless void. An eternity of her snoring would be preferable to one more minute in that hollow space.

He managed to maintain some semblance of self-control, setting his bare foot on the metal frame of her cot and shaking it to wake her. A tiny snarl spurt from her throat, and a frown drew over her half-open eyes. Well shit... he couldn't deny she was good company. Her quick-tempered outbursts—that foul language she chirped at uncharted octaves while she flailed her puny arms and tried to threaten him with her pouty face was quite entertaining.

She held the scouter to her eye, not bothering to clip it on. "I spent all day cleaning up _your_ mess, working on _your_ forged health reports and the details for _your_ escape! But by all means, my fucking liege, wake me up to fetch your breakfast."

"Excellent," he shrugged, skipping-over the sarcasm in her little speech while he turned to force down a smile. "Hurry up, then we train."

"We?" she yipped after him. Vegeta spun back to toss her his scouter, which she scrambled to catch, before he leapt to grab the lowest pipe in the ceiling and silently swung himself onto the air duct. A little more sleep would do until she returned.

* * *

Lieutenant Hoffstead held out his hand expectantly to the thumb drive she clutched in her fingers. She'd spent all night making the forgery as fool proof as possible, checking and rechecking every looped data point to ensure they wouldn't see through the ploy. Only time would tell.

Hoffstead wasn't very perceptive. He didn't even glance at her bandaged hand that still throbbed like a burn fresh from the oven. Strickland, however, was a hawk, not necessarily attuned to medical data, but neither was she. Bulma was both a mechanical and computer engineer, a dabbler in theoretical physics, but by no means was she a medical doctor. Her skills in the art extended to basic field medicine: simple stitch and fix first aid. If Strickland recognized the pattern in the data, saw through the hack she built into the vitals systems, their odds would become as precarious as the stories Vegeta divulged to her the day before. She fought to keep her hand from shaking as she placed the drive in Hoffstead's outstretched palm.

"Something bothering you, doc?" Trunks asked once they'd exited the building. He sure didn't waste any time breaking the rules. Just like the damn prince of the lab, the kid thought he was invincible and couldn't see that every detail she divulged was another nail in his coffin.

"I'm fine," she brushed him off. "But I could really use a cigarette."

A brief look of disappointment crossed the private's features before he directed her to stand at the side of a building and ran off to score a smoke from a fellow soldier in the quad.

Bulma ignored the private's judgment. Smoking wasn't a habit, not really. But this situation warranted some release. Besides, what the hell did he know about stress? He was barely an adult, a newbie private fresh from basic training. What life and death situations could he possibly commiserate? Since she'd met Goku, she'd been through so many, she was surprised she was still standing. Smoking was the least of her worries.

Private Trunks lit the cigarette he'd commandeered for her and watched with patient intent as she inhaled and pressed herself against the brick building, closing her eyes to the sun that only served to intensify the migraine beating against her skull.

"You can talk to me, ya know," the boy said. He leaned up against the building next to her, relaxing his soldierly stance, whatever of it he had to begin with. Sometimes it was hard to tell if the boy was rebellious or just plain stupid.

"And tell you what, exactly?" she spat.

Every bit of worry bubbled-up inside her. What exactly did the private expect her to divulge? That she created this whole situation when she handed over these weapon designs at twenty? That she was too naïve to see the consequences? That no matter how hard she tried, Vegeta may never get back what she'd taken from him, much less make it out alive? Or that she'd already promised both her father's and Goku's help, which may hurt them too? Or that the fucking alien monkey prince was a homicidal psychopath, but she cared about him more than she'd like to admit? Or maybe, she couldn't stop worrying that some reckless private had become her responsibility to protect too. And, on top of it all, there was supposedly some alien lizard army poised to become a threat to life on Earth! And with the Namekians gone, so were the Kami-damned dragon balls... for good. She couldn't even wish this shit away.

Gods, she wished she could at least talk to the private, bounce every worry off another person's mind. Venting to her friends and family was something she'd taken for granted: Goku's optimism, her father's brilliance. Even the way Yamcha lent encouragement with sweet obliviousness to her actual needs was something she missed. She only had Vegeta now. As the cause of her stress, he was hardly helpful. Besides, the man couldn't admit his own fears, let alone ease hers.

As if he could hear the rant inside her head, the private pinched his lips together in silence. His head was bent to the side, the Goku-esque grin absent from his face as he narrowed his blue eyes under his thick lavender brows, watching her smoke. He looked a lot like Vegeta, frowning at her like that.

"I have a present for you," he said, finally lifting the tension with his signature smirk.

"A present?" Bulma asked, side-eyeing the boy. His smile was off a bit, like he was hiding something behind it. Maybe he had a weird crush on her, like some nanny complex. Ugh... Wouldn't that just be the cherry on this shit cake.

"It's in my room. Care to come?" The private extended his elbow, encouraging her to take it.

"Uh, sure, but let's make it quick." Reluctantly, Bulma wrapped her hand around the starchy black, linen of his shirt and let the boy guide her inside the men's barracks. It was the same gigantic, cement structure that she'd been leaning against, which housed most of the male soldiers while they were on duty.

"Wait here, doc!" Trunks said, leaving her outside the door as he rushed cheerily into a large, bright room lined with enough bunks for his whole platoon. She watched him open his footlocker at the end of his bed, chucking out personal belongings—spare uniforms, a handheld video game console, even a sheathed sword—before he extracted a shoebox from the very bottom. He placed it in her hands. It was stuffed full of chocolates. The small, foil-wrapped candies nearly spilled over the top of the container.

"Candy?" Bulma quirked an eyebrow at the boy's gift.

"Yeah! Chocolate, your favorite, right?"

"It is." Bulma agreed, though it was a mystery as to how he knew that. Gods, was the boy obsessed? Was he really that observant in their trips to the mess hall? Still, she took the box without protest, and they made their way to collect that day's food. Whatever extra calories they could get, she would gladly accept. Hiding the prince's appetite behind her cafeteria excursions would be impossible even if he was human. Goku's famous appetite had a rival in Vegeta. His system tore through banana bags faster than... well... a monkey through bananas. Candy or not, he needed every advantage he could get.

After leaving the private at the lab door, she dumped the colorful foils onto her desk. With a crispy thump, a gun that had been hidden beneath the treats landed on top of the pile. Bulma picked up the weapon and looked it over. It wasn't a ki-gun, just an ordinary tranquilizer. What the hell did he want her to do with this? Maybe he left it there by accident. She glanced over her shoulder, seeing the prince swing down from his newfound perch. Bulma stuffed the gun inside the desk drawer before he could see it. Surely, he'd think it was meant for him.

Vegeta eyed the pile of chocolates suspiciously, tilting his head like an inquisitive puppy.

"Do you want one?" she asked, unwrapping a candy from its foil and holding it out to him.

"It looks like a turd," the prince said, scrunching his nose at the small brown chunk.

Thankfully, he was in a good mood. His sarcastic commentary was amusing enough; though Bulma wasn't so sure she could suffer one of his impassioned mood swings. The day hung heavy like all-day rain. Every detail, every little point of data that she had to direct to keep everyone she cared about intact was punted back and forth inside her brain, searching, always searching for any chinks in the armor.

If anything, messing with his so-called highness was a welcome reprieve. His haughtiness was almost endearing in the grand scheme of her current, miserable position. He really believed he was the gods' gift to the universe, despite not paying attention to any of it. From what she gathered, Prince Vegeta lived in his own little world while he conquered others, caring little about anything beyond his own ambition.

His emotional intelligence was laughable. He ran on each end of a spectrum: animal instinct on one end, and cold, calculated facts on the other. Any nuance in between was lost, which made it that much easier to fluster him.

"It's chocolate, a gift from Earth. It's delicious. Try it!" Bulma pressed it against his closed mouth. Reluctantly, Vegeta parted his lips and let her slip the candy onto his tongue. Watching the arrogant prince fall victim to her every whim improved her mood more than usual. It was proof that she had a handle on something, and it fascinated her to watch the alien squirm.

Vegeta chewed the chocolate with a frown. "Bleh! It's too sweet," he said, wrinkling his nose as he spat it into his palm with an overly-dramatic flair.

"You're insane." Bulma popped her own piece into her mouth and berated him with an exaggerated moan and smile as she ate it.

Vegeta just stared at her with his head cocked to the side, a perplexed pout on his lips and half chewed turd resting in his hand. Bulma tried to stifle a laugh, but it escaped as a snort, which only made the prince frown harder. Like a gasket, stress came charging up and burst from her throat in a fit of hysterical laughter she couldn't control. It roared through every limb. Her knees buckled, and she sat herself on the concrete, removing her translation piece to wipe tears from her eyes as laugher wracked through her body. It wasn't even that funny, but she couldn't stop herself. Every time she looked up at his dumbfounded face and lump of chocolate forgotten in his palm, she was met with a fit of roars. She clutched her abdomen as she tried to breathe. But the more she tried to control her breath, the more her laughter twisted in on itself.

Vegeta wiped the gob of Earth poo onto the woman's desk and squatted down to her level. She was having a fit. A joyful sound shook her whole body. He'd never seen anything like it before. She was smiling like a lunatic and laughing, but she was clearly upset, wiping at the salty droplets with the cuff of her coat as they rolled down her reddened cheeks. His brow pinched further watching her fail to wrestle down the frantic cries that vibrated every limb. It was uncomfortable to watch. These were not emotions he was used to dealing with.

"Stop it, woman!" he demanded, but she wasn't wearing her scouter. He could tell her fuck-all and she would keep it up. What the hell was he supposed to do? Listen to the Earth woman's deranged giggles as he tried go about his routine? He would have just swallowed the damn turd if it meant he could avoid this.

It wasn't more than a moment before her laughter turned to sobs. She hugged her knees into her chest and cried like a newborn cub, rocking back and forth on her seat. If it were anyone else, he would have just blasted her into silence. But no, he stupidly decided to pledge loyalty to the Earth girl.

He placed a hand on her shoulder to shake her back to her senses, but her head just lolled around and she cried harder.

"You can hug me, you stupid statue!" Her sniveling words skipped-in across his scouter.

"What?" Vegeta didn't move, unsure what she was asking, or if he even wanted to do it. But she gave him no choice, batting his hand away before she thrust herself at him, wrapping her arms around his neck. That fresh, flowery scent of her hair wafted into his head to make him stupid again, fogged up his mind like he was on those drugs. Gods, why was the earthling always trying to touch him?

Vegeta quickly pried her away and held her out at arm's length, determined to stop her infernal weeping his own way. He shook her violently by the shoulders. "I swear to gods, woman, if you don't stop your pathetic wailing, I will tear out your soggy eyes and stuff them down your throat."

The girl choked on her last sob and looked at him. Her blue brows bent over big, wet eyes, lips twisted into a snarl. She slapped him! Her small hand wacked across his royal flesh with rich clap. Huh, maybe she could understand his language. No matter, he couldn't feel it much, didn't even flinch. Still, the gall of this one. He brushed his palm across his face, trying to register the strange sensation that warmed his cheek. It was exciting—the way her doe eyes turned on a dime from incessant weeping to be flooded instead with rage, enough of it to strike a being like him. Gods, if only she was a Saiyan priestess, he'd steal her away from this dirt ball and make her his queen. Royal coupling battles be damned! _No... stop it!_ With some effort, he wrestled down the errant thought.

"Eat." Vegeta pointed at the bag and hopped to his feet. He spread out the contents across the desk, opening boxes of greasy meats, toasted breads, and some fluffy yellow substance that didn't have much flavor, but at least it wasn't sweet.

The earth girl finally roused herself from the floor and made her way over to the food. But instead of reaching for a fork, she threw both arms around his waist and squeezed, determined to get her damn hug whether he wanted it or not.

"Thanks," she said with her face pressed into his neck. The grip he had on whatever remained of his self-control crumbled a bit as his hands found the earthlings back and traveled up and down the length of her spine in an uncharacteristic act of comfort.


	7. The Dart

**Chapter 7: The Dart**

Training, she hated. The days were now filled with nothing less than his strict regimen, which she equated to prison workouts. He worked out relentlessly. Each day, thousands of pull-ups on the water main in the ceiling, thousands of sit-ups, of push-ups. After the morning he spent tearing apart the lab in search of weights—anything to weigh him down, to build-up his strength more quickly, and coming up empty-handed—he somehow coerced her to sit on his back, and chastised her anyway for not weighing enough to be any sort of challenge.

While he worked out, she calculated his path to freedom—quizzed him on the obstacles, the maze of hallways and armored doors and the placement of the soldiers that guarded them.

There were three crews. Their shifts overlapped. The best time to hit them was at the end of a shift, before their replacements arrived. They would be tired from standing guard, perhaps even distracted, looking forward to food and rest.

"You will need to be quick," she said. "One of those darts will take you down. And they have backup beyond this wing, tens of thousands. You can't give them a chance alert the entire base, or this whole thing comes apart."

She was sitting on his back as she said this. Her legs crossed as she reviewed the stats she'd committed to memory. Up and down, up and down, hundreds of times that day already, he wouldn't give it a rest. The calories of his meals long since burned away. She tried to explain that it wouldn't do him any good to train past his caloric intake, especially as thin as he'd become already, but he was stubborn.

"_Tch._ I can outrun a dart."

"Don't be cocky. They're faster than you think." She should know. She designed the super velocity weapons. He could outmaneuver them if he was whole. But even then, he couldn't possibly dodge thousands, or even hundreds at a time. Only one had to hit.

"I'll be behind you with this, just in case." She swept the gun Trunks had given her in front of his face.

Vegeta bucked her off his back, landing her on the floor with a careless splat.

"More darts?" he sneered.

"Yes, but just regular tranquilizers." His brows knit in confusion. They probably didn't have these on his planet. Why would they? "To put them to sleep," she explained.

"Sleep? Don't you have anything stronger?"

"What? No! We're not going to kill these men!"

"Why!?" the prince lamented. Bulma held up her palm, reminding him of the unrelenting burn he'd placed on it. "But they're soldiers! They're made to die."

"No! They're just doing their job. You promised no innocents. Knock them out." Bulma demanded. "It will conserve your energy anyway!"

His energy, that was the caveat. The Zenkai Power of the Saiyan race was not kicking in. Twice he'd almost died since he landed on this gods forsaken planet! Why was it not working? He should be healed. He should be stronger than before. At best, he was a glorified humanoid, no better than the soldiers that lined the hallways—not a superpower in any sense of the word.

The stupid serum lingered in his veins like drain sludge, and the food was not nearly enough to satiate his appetite. Constant hunger hollowed his insides, the definition of his ribs becoming more apparent every time he crossed his arms. The woman could tell. She barely ate anything but those foiled turds. Though her stomach spoke otherwise, it was obvious she was rationing her own food for him, claiming she wasn't hungry.

"It will come back. Trust me," she said this thing again. She was always saying that, and he always believed her like a gullible child, even now while he stood in front of her weaker than the day he was born.

He didn't feel like himself at all. In his weakened state, his brother's psyche continued to plague his mind like a raging virus. Even while he was awake, he could feel the pressure of Tarble's consciousness swell inside his skull, like there wasn't room for the both of them. Each morning he awoke amidst a struggle of powers, his brother's cheery energy versus his own battle cry of purpose. He feared he was losing, each day becoming more and more a slave to Tarble's weaknesses as they invaded his head. The fight against the Colds slipped further from his consciousness, swatted away like a fly. Deep down he knew it would be the most important battle of his life, but he struggled to remind himself of the fact as the days passed. He could barely focus on escaping the damn lab.

Every night as he slept, his brother's memories became more vivid. Inside his head, he saw the hazy glow of Earth's moon and felt a familiar surge of energy start at the tip of his tail and snake up his spine. His heart thudded, bones popped and muscle fibers tore as his brother's body transformed into an Oozaru. Through red-tinted orbs, he watched as the great ape trampled an entire city, collapsing buildings with a tap of his knuckles while hordes of humans darted around his feet screaming. Tarble couldn't control the beast within, but he had grown immense power, surpassing that of first-class warriors. Vegeta witnessed Tarble learn in mere seconds how to harness his ki into a swirling blue vortex of energy that swept across the planet's boundless waters, tossing ships into the air like children's bath toys. He felt him crunch through the chest cavity of the so-called Namekian King and pop out the other side with one fist leading the charge, a broken arm trailing behind him. Tarble had developed far beyond his supposed limitations. Despite his soft demeanor, he was amazing in his own way.

Training seemed to be the only time their minds were in sync. He could push far past hunger pangs and achy joints with his brother's unrelenting battle-lust. It was the lulls in the day that worried him. Meditation was a pipe dream. Tarble's flighty disposition blocked Vegeta's ability to concentrate on the tasks at hand. Every time he tried to center his thoughts on escape or the war, he'd lose his train of focus, bouncing from thought to thought: floating across Earth's tranquil landscapes on that insipid cloud, or salivating over freshly baked bread and grilled meats spread across a country table. Sometimes, his mind was wrapped-up in the earthy scent of a raven-haired human with his cheek pressed against the top of her head. Those thoughts were the ones that had him stalking the girl in his room with an unholy longing that was undignified for a pure-blooded prince of his race.

He couldn't stop it. His mind flittered off with an easy-going, playful sentimentality. Fucking with the woman's temper seemed more important than escaping, as if the whole thing was a game. She was continuously bossing him around, quizzing him on pointless stats, and trying to get him to rest and bathe. Tarble's power over his head conceded to her will in the most unusual terms.

Vegeta was off in one of these memories, soaking in a big, warm tub under the stars, Tarble's woman berating him over his shoulder until his swift arm halted her yammering by pulling her into the tub, fully clothed. Squealing and squirming, the earthling splashed in his brother's lap while he tried to pinch and squeeze her taut little ass under the water, smiling as he trailed his teeth down the line of her neck.

The beep from the opening door abruptly transported his awareness back into the room. Shit, he had a fucking hard-on. Leaning over the edge of the air duct, he tried to quash the feeling as he watched the top of the woman's blue head trail below with their dinner in hand. Trying to draw his focus away from the girl, he shut his eyes to inhale the smell of food. Only this time, a perfumed scent on her overpowered the boxes of meats. It smelled like the goo from his brother's memories.

"These are for you," the woman said when he finally regained enough composure to stroll up behind her.

Bulma unpacked the toiletries she collected from the barracks and set them on the desk. She didn't have to look to sense Vegeta behind her. Where there was food, there was a hungry Saiyan. "No dinner until you wash up."

"Why?" the prince asked, eying the bottles with disdain.

"Because you haven't bathed in weeks, and you've been training. Quite frankly, Vegeta, you stink." The last time he bathed was by her, while he was unconscious and chained.

Bulma didn't wait for his refusal. Instead she grabbed his wrist and dragged him to the bathroom with a huff, ignoring the threatening rumble in his throat.

For the most powerful being in the universe to be trapped on a random planet with no powers, he seemed to be taking it all in stride, for the most part. Lately, he was all bark and no bite. Every time he got snippy, she merely had to meet him tit for tat, and he'd eventually bend to her will. It made sense. He trusted her, that much was clear. Maybe even respected her. She catered to his every need since his arrival, came up with ingenious ways to help him, risked not just her life, but her father's, and even promised Goku's in dire straits. Knowing that—as empowering and endearing as it was to have Vegeta's odd show of appreciation, acquiescing to her every whim—Bulma felt that much more responsible for his fate as his ki trickled in at the speed of a tugboat.

After snatching the device from his face, she shoved his head under the running faucet in the sink, splashing the cold water over his coarse hair. He didn't resist much as she squeezed shampoo into her palm and began to scrub it into the prince's scalp, humming loudly and out-of-tune as she went just to annoy him. Gods, she loved to annoy him if only to hear the raging rumble inside his chest.

"Isn't that better?" she asked as the soap began to foam over the thick black tufts. She was enjoying this. Like bathing a wild cat, the threat was always there on the fringes as he hissed his Saiyan curses. But he behaved like a well-trained puppy dog beneath her palms. In fact, the more she pressed her fingers over his scalp, the more he melted, let his neck and shoulders slack against her grip, growls and curses lifting into a rolling purr. He was enjoying this, it seemed. His tail began to slowly stroke the air, cute in his own weird way.

Once she was done rinsing the suds and the water ran clear, he lifted his head. Even soaking wet, his hair tried to defy gravity, like the branches of an oak bogged down with snow. Thin rivers of water drained over his bare shoulders. Vegeta shook his soggy mop furiously like a mutt, spraying her and the entire bathroom in beads of fresh water.

"Ugh... Feel better now, jerk?" Bulma asked, wiping the droplets from her face and arms. "Wait, where are you going? You still need to brush your teeth and–"

As she tried to explain the principles of basic hygiene to the savage alien, he snatched up the shampoo bottle before she had time to react, and with one squeeze, spewed its entire contents over her head. Bulma stood stunned for a moment, watching thick piles of shampoo gob around her feet as the prince sauntered into the lab to dig through boxes of food.

He sensed her pint-sized wrath, knew she wanted to squawk and peck at him like an angry little bird. He would let her too. He liked to play this game with the earthling, and despite the hourglass that trickled over their heads, it had become an addicting routine. This time, as the woman began to stomp over screeching like a mad hen, a silver glint caught his attention from the desk.

"Not one more step, earthling." Vegeta nabbed her dart gun and pointed it at her.

The woman froze mid-step, slowly lifting her hands as her head bent in puzzlement. He could sense the wheels spinning inside, wondering if he was serious. A half-smile lifted the corner of her pursed lips, and her fixed gaze narrowed. She placed her airborne foot on the floor and stepped her other foot up to meet it, daring him to shoot. She should know better than to tempt him by now.

Vegeta pulled the trigger, laughing as the woman yipped and leapt where she stood. The dart hit the wall behind her and exploded. He didn't know they could do that. Simple sleep darts, wasn't that what she said? Thank gods he didn't actually aim it at the girl.

The woman seemed surprised by it too. Though she was far more curious about the popping noise of the dart than his feigned attempt to shoot her, spinning on her heels to see where it hit before she dropped to her knees in front of the cloud of smoke.

"You were really going to shoot me, asshole?" she asked, almost as an afterthought.

"Relax, it wasn't even pointed at you." Vegeta watched her waft her arms in the cloud that was quickly dissipating over a mound of supplies that hadn't been there before: food, loads of food, dried meats, bags of nuts, and boxes of wafers; combat uniforms like the soldiers wore; another gun like the one he'd just shot along with boxes and boxes of the sleep darts.

"How? Where the hell did this come from?" His wide eyes took in the mountain of provisions that suddenly appeared out of thin air at their feet.

The woman was digging for something in the pile, sifting through the supplies until she reached the bottom. She extracted what looked like the casing of a dart, only there wasn't a sharp tip. It was rounded and dull. Shoving all the supplies back into a heap, she turned and stood. The silver cylinder lay in her palm.

"This is a capsule. My father invented them." She dropped it in his hand and smiled smugly, like she'd invented it herself. "Just press it, and throw."

Vegeta did as he was told, pressing the button on the flat end of the device until it clicked. He tossed it at the pile of supplies, watching it all disappear in a puff of smoke. Only the small capsule was left spinning on the concrete. He picked it up and turned it over in his fingers as the woman grinned out of focus in his periphery. Maybe she was as smart as she'd claimed, or at least her father was.

"You can make these?" he asked.

The girl nodded. The milky skin of her cheeks tinted pink with pride. "When are you going to get it through your thick skull, Vegeta? I'm a total genius."

Maybe she was. After all, she salvaged the data from his ship; she made her own scouter with few supplies, created a means of communication. If she could make things like this, then gods knew what else she could cook-up in that brain of hers. The earthling might prove to be a real asset. These capsules, or whatever she called them, could feed an army of Saiyans from one tiny pod. Didn't she say she could build ships too? He had to admit, he was impressed. She called herself clever, but this was brilliant. Maybe he could send her to Vegetasei as his own secret weapon that would propel their race toward the future. There were still a few elite warriors and other Saiyans that remained on the planet that were loyal to him, that he could trust to hide her until he returned victorious from the war. With her technological prowess and his long-overdue ascension, he would be unstoppable. His empire would be the most powerful and efficient in the galaxies. No one would dare challenge him.

He glanced to her from behind the little tube that held provisions they needed to eventually rid themselves of this place and met her cocky grin with his own. "I have a job for you, woman, if you still want to go to my home planet."


	8. The Secret

**Chapter 8: The Secret**

Private Trunks stood outside the door of the bathroom in the women's small barracks for the few minutes she allowed herself to shower.

She never liked to leave Vegeta alone for very long, worried that the lieutenant would make an unsolicited visit. Unlikely, Trunks knew. Now that he'd gotten to know the man, he realized the lieutenant never strayed far from his routine, and checking-in on the powerful asset without Bulma or the general around was well outside his comfort zone.

Trunks ignored the coy stares of female soldiers as they strolled passed him. Most of the girls still seemed suspicious of his presence, muttering to each other under their breath about the newbie private and the blue-haired scientist's invasion of their space. The snide comments of two of them floated past his ears when he felt a small tug on the back of his vest.

"What?" Surprised, Trunks shot a glare over his shoulder.

One big blue eye peered through the cracked door, and her hand motioned him inside. The last thing Trunks wanted was to be seen entering the women's bathroom he was meant to guard, especially with her. He waited a moment for the soldiers to turn down the empty hall.

There was nothing more awkward than slipping into the ladies' room with just Bulma on the other side. Thankfully, she was already dressed, her damp hair blotting the shoulders of her fresh scrubs in a darker shade of blue. Trunks pressed his back against the door, using his lean frame as an iron doorstop.

Bulma's big blues squinted at him suspiciously. "Why are you helping us?" she asked, point blank. For someone who spent the past few weeks berating him for every little question, she sure was fine with asking her own.

His eyes darted side to side before they found their focus on his combat boots. She must have finally found the capsule. He should have buried the thing alone in the box of chocolates, but the soldiers had been searched head to toe at every entrance; a capsule would have been an obvious hiding place for their provisions. The chamber of an ordinary tranq-gun, however, he knew would easily pass their radar. If asked, he forgot the weapon was there. Honestly, he thought she'd check the chamber first, if only to count her ammo, but then again, Bulma wasn't a soldier.

"Sorry, kid. It's classified," he grinned uneasily, repeating her own words. She only rolled her eyes and placed her hands on her hips.

"Cute shit, Trunks. The stuff in that capsule? You're hiding something, and I want to know what."

He couldn't tell her what he knew, at least not yet. Trunks rubbed the back of his head. It wasn't the easiest question, and he hated that his hesitation was bound to the most selfish reasons. If he told her the truth, it could have consequences that changed the very fact of his existence. He could still help them without disclosing the things he knew. Intel wouldn't save Vegeta, at least not now.

"Look doc, it's just like you said, information will get me killed." His brows furrowed, losing all innocence as he watched her demanding glare lift with guilt. He hated hiding things from her, making her suffer any more than she already had. Though Trunks wanted nothing more than to divulge every detail of his mission, at the risk that he could evaporate faster than dew on a blade of grass, he was left scratching his head. If he didn't exist, there'd be no one left to help them, and the whole trip would have been in vain. Timing was everything.

"I'm sorry. It's just odd is all. The food, the uniforms—how did you know exactly what we needed? It's like you're hacking my system, or–"

She paused before suddenly she jerked the strap of his vest, pulling him toward her as her eyes traced his face in wonder. "Gods, are you telepathic too?"

He wasn't. None of the ones raised on Earth had that power.

"No," Trunks said demurely, as he pried her hand off his vest and wrapped the small extremity in his own, covering the cursed burn that caused her endless pain. "I'm on your side, doc. That's all you need to know for now."

Just once, she tugged hard at her fist trying to free it. The most headstrong woman he'd ever known, Bulma operated on her own terms. It was one of the traits he loved about her. She fought her shitty circumstance the only way she knew how: thrashing her limbs and lashing her tongue long after any normal person would have given up. Trunks didn't let go, kept his easy grip, kept his bright blues locked to hers.

"Who are you?" Bulma asked, her voice a whisper as she searched the private's face. Since Vegeta shot that capsule, she'd abandoned the assumption that the private's actions were rooted in some half-baked crush. No, the private knew more than he let on. He was helping them. But why?

The private sighed, letting his gaze drop back to his shoes as he let go of her hand. "I'm sorry, doc, but you wouldn't believe me if I told you," he shrugged, almost sadly as he slipped out through the door.

* * *

Vegeta felt a little stronger after tearing through the capsule's provisions. Without the gnawing complaints of his stomach, the past few days were almost peaceful. Though now, as he pulled his body up and down from the pipe, rumblings and fatigue returned. He grunted his frustration as he dropped to his feet to acknowledge the annoying need to refuel.

The woman had finally gotten it through her head not to bother him while he was training. Since he invited her to Vegetasei, she was a one-track mind. Question after question poured from her lips, seeking every mundane detail of the Saiyans' way of life: their politics, their religion, even their breeding habits. Bothering to answer one question only spawned ten more, and threats did fuck-all but make her squeal her little curses—a whole other breed of distraction that had become increasingly difficult to intercept before it settled between his legs.

Ignoring her constant babble for the first few hours every day until she got bored and went back to her work seemed to be the only fix, but it meant wasting precious focus to tune her out. Like food, concentration was a scarce commodity now that Tarble had taken-up residence in his head. Of course the second his feet touched the ground, she spun around in her chair to open her mouth.

"Tell me more about this job," she said. "You want capsules for your army?"

At least today's drivel wasn't completely pointless. Maybe answering her for once would provide her with something to do besides pestering him. Vegeta gave her his attention.

"That's one thing. Saiyans are warriors, not inventors. Our technology isn't our own. It's old, and it's falling apart. Case in point." He nodded snidely toward the worthless wreckage that mocked him from the corner of the room.

She seemed to like that response, tapping her finger to her chin as if pondering the possibilities. Good, that's just the kind of brain he needed to bring his empire to the forefront of innovation.

But then she looked up. Her eyes narrowed critically, as a sudden, pertinent question sprung to her mind. "Are you going to pay me?"

"Pay you?" Vegeta scoffed, somewhat bewildered by her insinuation. What kind of a question was that? As if he was some beggarly commoner, she really doubted his ability to provide? "In case you've forgotten, I'm a gods-damned royal. You'll be compensated far beyond your little earthling dreams. I could give you a whole fucking planet."

"It's just before you said that only slaves are allowed in the capital, and I'm nobody's slave." Bulma realized she'd touched a nerve. She didn't mean to insult him personally. It was all just so… foreign. Ensuring her own status, not to mention freedom, was necessary, especially without him there, off at war for an indeterminable amount of time. Who would protect her from his own hostile people if not himself?

Vegeta snorted at the thought. Gods, he'd pity the fool that tried to enslave a girl like her. "Keep a low profile in public and you'll be fine," he said. "I have a woman I trust that can house you, and a warrior to keep you safe."

Vegeta nabbed the capsule from the desk and popped it open, empty boxes and wrappers mostly. Finally finding an unopened package of wafers, he ripped the top off and began to ravenously stuff them into his mouth by the handful.

"A woman, huh? As in a girlfriend?"

What was that? Another earthling title? The derision in her tone made him careful to respond. He continued shoving crackers into his maw and shrugged.

"I mean, is she your lover or something?" The way the earthling cocked her head and crossed her arms, her lips tightly pursed in irritation, he'd seen that look before. It was in the faces of the council priests as they argued amongst themselves over whose daughter would emerge from the royal coupling battles as queen-in-waiting. The earthling was staking her claim, but not on his title like the court. This felt personal.

Since the night he woke from netherworld, he couldn't get the damnable woman out of his head. She was always there, in every waking moment and almost every hijacked dream. More than just lust was a sensation he couldn't define. He wanted her to be near, trapped in the same room forever all to himself. Each time she left to procure food, he thought only about her return. The sound of the beeping door twisted his insides in anticipation, and not just for the food.

It never occurred to him that she might be harboring the same obsession with him. Was that what she felt leaving him each day? In a way, it pleased him, fed his ego. But it was a moot point. Whatever desire he had for her was a fool's daydream. Even if he didn't believe in the will of the Saiyan gods or their pathetic council of priests, the Saiyan public would call for his head if he mated an alien, especially one as weak as her. Neither the royals nor the sacred classes were allowed such a ritual even amongst their own kind, not until they were officially coupled. Not even the barren Saiyan whores were available to the elites, most definitely not a prince. Though that didn't stop most of the upper echelons of society from going about it anyway.

Vegeta, however, wasn't interested in the likes of the underclass, or the elites for that matter. He'd been sheltered from most people in general, hidden away in a castle as an only child, committed to long lectures among old priests and endless training among old warriors. After that, his life was spent trapped between battles and pods, flung from planet to planet on deadly missions with only Raditz as company. Stopping at Vegetasei in between raids to deliver enemy heads, his trophies, they were only meant to prove his worth to the populous, the royals and the church alike. He existed there only long enough to bask in the glow of victory before he was sent away again, shipped off to another battle before he could do anything his king deemed stupid.

Women were the furthest thing from the prince's mind, until he was trapped with one—forced to breathe the same air as the blue-haired human, day in and day out, testing the lifetime of self-control that had been beat into his head. He could beat this test too. Still, it was interesting, observing her pout at the idea that he had a mate back on his planet. She was jealous, and the fact made his stomach leap toward his throat with a feeling he couldn't wrestle down.

"Tch. Why do you ask?" He tested her response to be sure, watched as the girl aimlessly stuttered, failing to come up with one. Vegeta rolled his eyes. "She was my nursemaid. I trust her."

The girl relaxed her posture. Embarrassed, she changed the subject at the first opportunity when he tossed the empty box at the floor.

"Vegeta! Haven't you heard of rationing?"

"So? Send for more," he shrugged.

He picked up one of the black army pants from the pile and shot a small hole through the back for his tail. As he stripped off the ratty scrub pants to dress, he laughed to himself as the earthling's face turned blood red, and she spun her chair around to face her computer. Gods, this earthling was shy. He'd been nude in front of more Saiyans and alien servants than he could count. Not that he'd been nude in front of a woman like her before. Still, it was entertaining to watch her fair skin blot red with heat and her eyes bug wide before she turned away, her body stiff and reeking of pheromones.

"I can't. The private risked his life enough just getting us these. I won't put him in any more danger. He's just a kid."

Vegeta half-listened to her chatter as he changed. They were out of food though. If she wasn't willing to press for more from the purple-haired private, he'd be back to starving. Not that the food seemed to make much difference to regenerating his ki, but it did make a difference to his stamina and the growing gaps between his ribs.

"Are you about done? Tell me when I can turn around."

Vegeta quietly stalked up behind the woman, feeling the urge to fuck with her, especially now. She wasn't just protecting him, helping him. The snotty pout that stole her face when she asked him about his nanny, it was possessive, territorial, downright Saiyan of her. Despite their sacred bond, Vegeta was nobody's property. Not even the Saiyan Council could claim his loyalty. His father managed to, from time to time. Though his fealty to the man was based on a mutual desire to survive their family crest; it had nothing to do with feelings. This earth girl, she was different. As much as birthright or bloodlines, a sacred bond cast upon souls was binding, not something done lightly, and certainly not something done with non-Saiyans. He'd already overstepped the church on that point when he branded her, but then again, he was always one to test the boundaries of their faith. And she was here, ignoring him, pretending to click around on her computer when he bent down and licked her cheek.

_What the fuck?_ Bulma felt the man's tongue skim up her face. Her eyes grew wide as she wrestled with how she should rightly react to such a thing. He licked her! Like a dog! She swung her chair to face him, meeting his self-satisfied smirk.

"Gross, Vegeta! What the hell? Did you just lick me?"

The prince merely shrugged and lifted his frame to stand over her, arms folded over his chest. Not that she'd indulge him if the strange gesture was his way of flirting.

Often, she wondered if her crush on the alien prince hindered her ability to be rational, but then again, what was rational? Her own father agreed to help of his own good will, and Goku would give his life to a stranger if he thought it was righteous. Regardless of her school girl infatuation with her fellow prisoner, she convinced herself over and over that she was making the right choices. The only nightmare she foresaw was if this all went to shit in the worst way possible. It would only hurt that much more to have feelings for him and be the one to cut him open. Undoubtedly, Strickland would force her to be his coroner. The man was a sadist.

Whatever Vegeta felt about her in return, there was no point in ignoring him now. There was also no point in throwing herself at him. She forced herself to ride a fine line, wanting to be close to him and talk to him, yet keep him from infiltrating too far.

He was an equation that she was determined to solve. His personality shot from every angle like nothing she'd ever seen. Strickland was an idiot to think this man was anything but an animal. Sure, he was undomesticated, but he was more interesting than any human she'd ever encountered, charming in his own way, growing more so every day.

Even if they made it out unscathed, Vegeta had shared enough intel on his backward culture to deduce that it wasn't exactly kosher to hook up with a girl like her. Coupling battles, he said—an army of Saiyan women fighting for the right to be his queen. So stupid. It sounded worse than arranged marriages, fighting to the death over a man. Not over a man, over a title. How primitive. A whole empire that didn't believe in love, not for their partners and worse, not for their children, sending them off to die in the dark corners of the universe. It was disgusting. Even if she wasn't going to be his girlfriend… coupling… mate… whatever it was these people called their unions, if she was going to work for him, there had to be some ground rules.

"Vegeta, when you're king, will you still send the children away? The weak ones?"

His smirk dissolved as he twisted his thick brows and lifted his lip over a canine, obviously hurt by the question.

"Of course not, idiot. Haven't you been listening to anything I've been saying? It's not real, what they say about the weaklings. Tarble proved them wrong! He's almost as strong as I am..."

_Was._ Vegeta caught himself in the back of his head. _Fuck._ According to his visions, Tarble was stronger than him now, by a lot. Vegeta was nothing, still. Absolutely worthless even by a third-class standard. Whatever playful mood he'd entertained a second before eroded, drenched in the acid of his reality. His own thoughts reared up piercing through the pleasant fog of the girl's pheromones and his brother's affable spirit.

"When the hell do you expect my power to return, earthling? You've been coughing up the same shit since we met. And so far, it's done fuck-all to help me."

Bulma asked a simple question meant to ease her conscience, but it was met with vitriolic rage, even despite him answering the way she'd hoped. No, like he'd told her before, he didn't believe in most of the Saiyan Church's practices, and when he became king, he'd be different. Not that she was going to live on Vegetasei forever, gods no. But she wasn't about to lend her skills to assist in more morally dubious acts. By lending her brain to a race of warriors, she needed to ensure that her creations wouldn't be used in ways she didn't approve, like they were being used against her now, _on him!_

Yet Vegeta snapped before her eyes. Like Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde, his odd flirting triggered to wrath, homed in on the fact that he wasn't getting stronger. How could she blame him? Before she put him down, she promised his strength would return, and so far, he'd done nothing but deteriorate before her eyes, as if he'd been shot up with a chronic wasting virus. Even with Trunks's extra provisions, it wasn't enough. Not an ounce of fat coated his bones, all lean muscle. His ribs were beginning to show beneath his scarred skin.

Of course he didn't trust her. She didn't trust herself. This whole time, she'd been riding on high hopes and computer simulations of the effect of her serums on humans. He wasn't a human, not really, but he was close enough, considering their species could breed. Unfortunately for them, the effects on Vegeta were lingering much longer than anticipated, and it was hard to explain why he wasn't improving. For once, the genius didn't have answer.

"I've run all the simulations I can, and you should be better. I don't know what's keeping you back. But you will recover, Vegeta. Please don't get discouraged. We still have a week."

The prince merely hissed his frustration. Likely sick of hearing the same old promise, he turned from her to retreat to his air vent. How he could find the means to sleep on the hard, tin ducts was beyond her. Obviously, his animal instincts were what caused him to seek the highest ground he could find to rest. Periods of solid sleep lasted longer for him up there than the soft mattress he'd previously used when he was flanked by chains. But it couldn't be comfortable. Kami, she felt bad for him. Like a zoo animal, he was trapped in a tiny space without much hope of escape, hope she gave him in the first place, promised, even. Ugh... Why wasn't he getting better? This was the whole plan, him healing. He should be better. Maybe it was his attitude holding him back. Like some self-fulfilling prophecy, he was stubborn enough to show her that her way wouldn't work. He wanted his brother to come, didn't he? Maybe enough to prove her wrong out of spite.

"Vegeta? Please come down!" She didn't know why she was calling for him. If he wanted to stew up there, that was his own business. Yet she couldn't help but poke the bear, force him to fight rather than give up to sleep, even though he needed it. Fighting, that was his thing, yet he was sulking like a bratty child.

"Fuck off, earthling."

"I won't. Come down." He ignored her, pretending to sleep as he so often did when his mood soured. "You're such a fucking drama queen, you know that?"

She should have felt bad for calling him out for a mood he rightfully earned. He seemed defeated, depressed, like when he was still chained and she denied his request for Goku's help. Though now, after he branded her, he stopped asking for Goku or his com-link to be fixed, as if he trusted her to make things right. Flattering as it was, and as grateful as she was not to be forced into implicating her friend, she couldn't help but wonder what the man was thinking. He trained relentlessly every day, but to no avail. Was he giving up now? That didn't seem likely. The prince had a stubbornness about him that said he'd rather die than give an inch. Bulma knew what that felt like. Her friends often said the same thing about her. Yet Vegeta was hidden away now, stewing in his own misery, refusing to part with a vent.

"Get your sorry ass down here! You can sleep with me," she said. It was hard to tell if the invitation was for his benefit or her own. Still, no response came. He was committed to his tantrum, giving way to both their failures as if it was his choice. He'd rather torture himself than admit he needed anyone to help him, especially not on the level she was offering: emotional support. Vegeta would prefer to tether himself to an air duct ten feet off the ground than discuss his feelings with another living creature, even one he clearly had _feelings for_ but couldn't admit. Only a growl rained down, followed by the toss of his eyepiece, which she caught, thankfully, before it shattered on the floor.


	9. The Ritual

**Chapter 9: The Ritual**

_*Note: A bit of a lemon. I tried to take it out, but then the story didn't make any sense. _

His voice was always lower and raspier while he was dreaming, and his tail always twitched with a life of its own. Every once in a while, his head would whip back and forth, but only during bad dreams, the ones that left him aloof and bitter for the better half of the day. Unfortunately, those were becoming more frequent.

She knew enough of his language now that she didn't need the translation device to hear how his words seeped into one another when he was sleep talking.

"Hang on, hang on," he mumbled.

During the last few days, they'd hardly exchanged more than a few words, at least on his part. All his teasing and taunting grew horns, bullying and berating her whenever he chose to speak. He was growing anxious. A wild animal in too small of cage with too little power to bust through the bars.

It wasn't until late at night, after he'd worn himself out, that his more amiable nature showed through. If bragging could be considered a show of friendliness. Still, she almost didn't want to fall asleep. Listening to him extol his own virtues somehow reminded her of the brighter side to him—all their games and pranks, talking smack until they were too tired to care who'd won. She missed that Vegeta, longed for him like an old boyfriend. Even selfishly hoped he'd never fall asleep either, just so she could observe the excitable spark in his eyes like setting him free for the first time. There was still a semblance of hope left in him, despite the sluggish way his strength seeped back into his body as the days closed in.

Thankfully now, he wasn't having one of those bad dreams. Steady as a drum, his tail thumped against the tin duct, almost lulling her back to sleep.

She'd often force herself to catch the extra rest whenever she woke before him. Serum-free, he was a light sleeper. Slipping out the door without rousing the prince was impossible, and she'd rather not listen to him grumble. Besides, he needed the rest too. Bulma closed her eyes again.

_Thud. Thud. Thud._

"Gohan!" Vegeta shouted.

Bulma's eyes popped open, and she turned an ear toward the ceiling. He was having one of Goku's dreams. It wasn't that she hadn't believed Vegeta when he explained his connection to her friend, but it was surreal to witness the proof. Maybe she'd heard him reenact Goku's dreams before. But his son's name on Vegeta's lips left no doubt that they were connected on some mental plane.

"You didn't lose it. It's on your head." _Thud. Thud. Thud._ "That's my boy." _Thud. Thud…_

The music of his tail stopped. Bulma lifted her lids to meet the black pair of eyes leering down at her. "Morning, Vegeta."

Seamlessly, he rolled over the edge of the vent, landing softly on his feet, sauntering over to her cot as he did every morning. Except this time, he didn't stand in front of her with his arms crossed, kicking at the frame and demanding food. Instead, he sat down next to her hips. His brows pinched like he was lost in thought as he squinted into the distance at nothing in particular.

"He has a son?" Vegeta said when he finally turned to her. He was still frowning, but it was hard to tell with him. Vegeta scowled more than he didn't.

Bulma propped herself up on her elbows. "Yes," she said. "His son's name is Gohan."

"A _halfling,_" he stated, his tone thick with disdain, like the word itself dirtied him.

Oh, so that was his beef. She'd been informed full well of his species' disgusting, eugenic form of procreation. And even though the prince claimed he thought the church's practice of exiling the weaker newborns was idiotic, he still struggled to let go of the same close-minded ideas about classes and pedigrees. He clung to a twisted belief that he was superior to everyone else by virtue of his birth.

Wasn't it just last week that he was offering her a job? Not demanding she work for him, but asking her like a respected equal?

"Is that so appalling?" she asked. "Gohan is smart and kind, and... Well, what did you expect, Vegeta? Goku doesn't know he's an alien!"

She caught him wince at the use of his brother's Earth name. This time, she used it out of spite rather than habit. He was snubbing her species, like he always did. As much as he seemed to respect her, off and on, deep down she knew he still believed that Earth was just another pitiful planet of cogs to rule over, existing just to stoke the endless ego of a race of intergalactic bullies.

It pissed her off endlessly whenever he got into one of his highbrow rants on how pathetic and weak he thought her people were. Playful name-calling was one thing, when he was in a teasing mood. But those moods stretched further apart as they inched closer to Strickland's return—without so much as the few softballs of ki Vegeta lobbed at the fortified ceiling in a fit of rage. It was only a matter of time before the chauvinist reared his purebred head to compensate.

"Your nephew is half-earthling, so what? If you really believe that my species is so deplorable, why should I waste my time helping some meat-headed monkey make himself feel better about his low IQ? Drop me off at a trade planet if that's how you're gonna be. I'll gladly go find another planet in need of my skills."

Vegeta was a far cry from stupid, but she was trying to hit a nerve. Standing up to him through name-calling and snide comments seemed to be the only thing that earned her the modicum of respect she deserved. Of course, physically she was a toothpick compared to the thick oak, but she could outwit him. Especially when it came to toying with his emotions, something he seemed to have little insight or control over. When he made her feel weak, she'd make him feel dumb and animal. She wasn't proud of it, stooping to Strickland's level of condescension, but it worked.

Usually, he'd shoot off his smart mouth, let colorful jabs fly in some impassioned sermon until he was red in the face and took to training away his insecurities until he passed out on the floor. Or better yet, took to his stupid perch, like a territorial cat leering over his domain. This time, he just looked at her from under his bent brows. She could sense an internal conflict beating inside his mind as his eyelids closed for a breath before he looked down into his palm, as if he was noticing the pain of his brand for the first time.

"I am not so stupid to think that strength is just physical abilities," he said.

His focus flicked up from his palm to meet her eye to eye. Even behind the pink eyepiece, his steely dark orbs always piqued her interest, like admiring the skin of a venomous snake as it coiled in the yard. Still, she was defiant, standing her ground with a vicious glare of her own. She'd always stand her ground, no matter how high the prince raised his hackles.

Sometimes it seemed like he was more afraid of her than his imprisonment—afraid of the ritual he used to tie their souls together or simply his feelings toward her, it was hard to tell. And that was saying a lot, considering that he could probably break her neck with a swift flick of his fingers.

He seemed a little annoyed that she didn't acknowledge his half-assed compliment. His glare flitted back to his palm, then back to her, and back to his palm again before his gaze floated halfway up her body and hovered. Reflexively, her mind tried to conjure a snide comment, but before she could open her mouth, he plopped his head in her lap and burrowed his arms underneath her butt like he was adjusting the fluff of a pillow. An exasperated sigh escaped his chest as he made himself quite at home in between her thighs.

She should curse him out, push away his boundless ego in a valiant rage, but something in the bear hug he clasped tightly around her hips felt like him admitting defeat. He needed her again. Like the night he went to netherworld, he wanted her close. She let him hold her, use her pelvis as a pillow, even going so far as to rest a hand on his arrogant head.

Before she could stop herself, that hand was twining its fingers through his thick tufts of hair, scratching the beast's scalp until a soft purr began to whirr from his chest. The vibration rippled sweetly across her lap. Gods, if Stockholm Syndrome had an opposite, she was painfully ill. She should stop. Baiting him would only make things worse.

When he dipped his face further into the crease between her thighs and sighed again, she thought for a short second he might just fall back to sleep. Except, he didn't. Instead he began to bury his nose against the flesh between her legs. _Oh gods, don't do that,_ she thought, as if he'd burrowed against her sensitive anatomy accident. Was he smelling her? How weird. Suddenly, she was certain this was no accident when he nipped at the thin material of her scrubs before he nestled his face into her again and began to turn the ridge of his nose against her in small circles, each time pressing with more force. The steady vibration from his chest intensified between her legs.

Kami, she was a siren luring a sailor. She baited his affections and made herself his savior. At least it felt that way with all her promises of power that so far failed to arrive. But she wasn't about to stop him. It felt... good. And honestly, despite his fragile state of mind, this was his choice. Wasn't it? As many times as she imagined being with Vegeta in the past weeks, never once did she act.

He bit at her clothes again, this time taking them in his teeth as his hands slipped out from under her to press up along her thighs. He grabbed the waistband of her scrubs and began to tug them over her hips until he could slide them easily from around her ankles. If she'd had a little forewarning about being locked in this cage for weeks on end, she wouldn't be going commando or donning scrubs at all. But the prince didn't seem to care.

He stalked back over her, slipping his hands under the bottom hem of her shirt to easily pull over her head and toss over his shoulder, tracing his eyes up her nearly naked form as he knelt on all fours from above. Then he stopped. Once his gaze reached her face, he just stared overhead, frozen as a spotted deer. Was he actually waiting for permission to kiss her? For a second, she thought maybe he'd come to his senses, would snap back to his uptight misery. But it wasn't quite that. It was almost a skittishness. Two species that weren't meant to meet this deep in the woods, he seemed poised to jump away, to run off into the opposite tree line.

"You should kiss me," she said with a flattened tone that came off more commanding than she intended. But she didn't want him to run.

His head tilted in a way that was almost innocent, frowning at her like a brightly wrapped chocolate.

Kami, did he not know what a kiss was? She'd said it in English, and without her translator, she had no way of knowing if the word translated to his or not, beyond the puzzled expression on his face suggesting the negative.

How was that fucking possible? He was an intergalactic prince. Certainly he wasn't a virgin, was he? Were they _that_ religious? Or maybe his race just didn't kiss. Unlike Goku, raised among humans, Vegeta had enough animal qualities about him that sometimes she wondered how they were the same species.

How sad though... Sex without kissing seemed so cold and impersonal. It was her favorite part about intimacy. At least it was back when she and Yamcha had started dating. It lost its lure over the years, dried up with that relationship. But now, as Vegeta hovered above her, anticipation zipped through every nerve like it was the first time. Even knowing his vulnerable state, she couldn't bring herself to stop.

Bulma reached up to brush a palm across his cheek and dove her fingers into his hair, clasping the side of his face around his ear before she tugged him toward her, forcing their lips to meet.

No, he'd certainly never done this before. His lips pressed against hers with soft, unmoving laxity, waiting for her to take the lead. She could handle that. Bulma traced the tip of her tongue over the crease of his lips, urging them to part as she slid it between them. Brushing her tongue into his mouth and over his own, feeling the sharp points of his canines as she twisted it across it back again. It was all it took to catch on. Soon, she was making out with the prince of no kissing. Albeit prudishly, a pair of nervous teens focused only on the movement of their mouths.

He broke their kiss for a moment. His warm lips skimmed across hers, and his hand lightly clasped her chin as he tipped her face for a better angle, the skin of his fingertips surprisingly soft for a lifelong warrior. The tip of his tongue traced her bottom lip before he dipped it between them, the way she taught, to stroke against her own. It was slow and soft. Different from Yamcha or any of her messy one-night stands. Like everything the prince did, he was graceful and precise. Fuck, she felt like a snake charmer, training her subject to trick.

Still, it was something new and something she'd craved since the night she spent wrapped-up beside him so many weeks ago. Every fiber soaked him up, pulling him into her vortex like the Earth and its moon. The taste of him was better than any kami-damned chocolate on the planet. As his tongue brushed against her own, his soft purr hummed against her lips, each press of their mouths growing longer and more forceful. The huffs of breath he drew from his nose, instead of pulling away for air, only drove her forward as the heat of his exhales rolled across her cheek.

Bulma arched her back to let his fingers slip behind her and unhook her bra, stupidly. If he didn't know how to kiss, he certainly didn't know how to unclasp a bra. The prince lifted his frame to stare down at the contraption that held her breasts with that tipped head of his. He dipped one hand under a cup and ripped it from her frame with a swift tear, tossing the garment over his shoulders. It seemed she'd be going commando up-top too for the remainder of their stay. She'd be more annoyed if it was anyone but him. Vegeta somehow earned a pass. The same way he gravitated toward her bratty temper, she found his uncultivated nature attractive, endearing in some ways, when he butted up against a word or a feeling he didn't understand, especially like now. Kissing, really? He had no fucking clue. No eye-rolling pickups, no smooth moves—just him, kittenish and sweet and completely perplexed as he stared down at her breasts.

He coiled his back like an alley cat before he slid from his knees to lay his full weight over the top of her, escaping a moan against her mouth as he got back to the only move she'd taught him so far. The sheer weight of him, despite being naturally petite and unnaturally starved, still gobbled her up with all his heat and hard muscle. His bare chest melted into hers without a hairsbreadth between them, fitted like puzzles.

His hard length was pressed against the inside of her thigh. It kind of hurt, crushed together as they were. Bulma slid a hand over his butt, shifting her hips to center him between her legs, bucking into him to get him to move. Gods, this was puppy training, not what she'd expected at all from a universal warrior.

Kissing, as delicious as it was, wasn't nearly enough now that he was pressed on top of her, heavy as a boulder. Her fingers traced down his spine, fingering the top of his pants as he ground into her. His hips rolling between her legs, circling against her clit in the same rotation as his nose minutes ago.

Those pants of his had to go. Her fingers slipped between their bodies to unbutton them. Hooking her thumbs around the waistband, she began to tug them off. Vegeta lifted his hips up from her frame, not leaving her lips as she bent a leg up high enough to hook the hem with a toe and slide them down his legs, letting him kick them off the rest of the way.

When he settled his hips back down, he pressed his dick against the soft entrance of her body, begging to be let in. His lips left hers. His teeth traced down her neck as he threaded his fingers into her hair and pulled her head to the side, feeling up the ticklish spot behind her ear with warm breath.

Bulma slipped her hand down between them. Spreading her legs and arching her hips, she wrapped her small fist around his cock to guide him in. Painful at first as he pushed himself inside in one go, Bulma only let a small wince cross her face. She'd have told him to be gentler about it if she wasn't afraid he'd change his mind. He still danced around the act with a coyness that seemed out of character compared to his usual confidence, as if one hesitant move by her would break his focus. She dared not even say his name, not now that they were here, afraid words at all would break the spell. Instead, she dove headfirst into uncertain tides, combing her fingers through his hair. Propped on his elbows, his hands wrapped around her head as his lips ghosted over her own in hot breaths. His hips found a steady rhythm that no longer felt painful, but good... really good.

Burying his face in the crook of her neck, Vegeta panted against the sensitive skin behind her ear. It sent her toes curling and her legs to wrap around him to pull his hips closer.

Usually, she'd have sought more interesting positions, more domineering ways to get her off, the need to be touched and rubbed outright. Of course, it hadn't been like that at first with Yamcha, but they were teens then. It was before she knew how sex worked. Now, with Vegeta, somehow the simplicity of getting back to basics was more than enough to undo her. Maybe it was the long days she spent thinking about it, trapped inside this room with him, building it up. Maybe it was the fact that she knew he was breaking some rule he set about her, that he'd resisted for weeks—his strange culture, his belief that she was a lesser being, lower than the bottom rungs of his own race. And yet here he was pining after her, moaning against her like she was a goddess. She reveled in it.

But if she had to pin it down for sure, it wasn't any of those things. It wasn't something tangible that drew her to the maniac. In all his crazy glory, she did pine for him too, took care of him, talked to him, bonded with him. This wasn't some stupid crush, something to be torn from the pages of her diary when it wore off. This was deeper than that as far as she could tell. Their brand, that was something. The simple fear he held for it told her it wasn't a thing he gave so willingly. But why her? It was like he chose her. He didn't have to; she'd already unchained him. He could have just left his promises at his word, but he didn't. He went so far as to scar them both with a thing he seemed to fear. It left a deep mark, physically obviously, but spiritually too. Maybe he'd wanted to tie them together in a way, even if it was subconscious.

She pulled at the back of his neck, guiding his lips into hers again, bucking against each thrust of his hips to drive him deeper. One arm clasped around his ass, she wrapped the other across a broad shoulder. Feeling him pull out of her and push back in again. Their bodies heated, sweat slicking between their skin. Oh, this was nothing like any of the men she'd had before. Granted she was wasted most of those times, regret setting in before anything happened. Vegeta was something else. Not that the sex was anything to write home about, he was clearly inexperienced. But he was fresh, crisp as winter air, waking every cell that composed her being.

With Vegeta's increasing pace, the feeling of a coming orgasm grew, warm and buzzing, caused her to claw the back of his neck, to pull his face to hers. The rough hairs of his unshaven face bristled against her cheek as she shut her eyes. She pressed up against his hips, focused on the waves of ecstasy that built up inside her core.

But then he tore her hand away from his head to wrap his fingers between her own. As he pressed their palms together, the glowing symbols they both wore pulsed with dim heat.

_Oh shit._ This was a ritual too, wasn't it? The thought dawned on her. That's why he seemed so skittish; it wasn't meant to be. She knew it before they started, but shit why? Why did he initiate it? Was he just that forgone, lost in Goku's head? But that certainly didn't make sense. Her relationship with Goku was platonic. Though they were both adults now, he was still the same kid in her eyes. No, this was all Vegeta. But he was lost. An escapee from a twisted cult, he was now caught in another. His mind was breakable like glass, and she was taking advantage of him. But still, she moved forward, ignoring the warnings.

Burying his face in the crook of her neck, he let out a deep, guttural moan, his muscles tightening up as she felt him come. His body tensed and quaked. Finding her lips again on his own accord, his mouth pressed against hers, unbreathing. But she didn't want him to stop, the sparks of an orgasm were intensifying between her legs.

"Don't stop." she demanded, and he didn't. He always obeyed, but why? The madman possessed the spirit to do anything he wanted, yet he crumbled for her, every single time.

She was the Delilah to his Samson. She lured him, made him fall in love with her only to cut his hair and steal his resolve when he least expected it. That thing in her hand was some spectral tie he offered out of trust, and not only did she let him do it, she encouraged him. It was awful. She never believed in any organized religion herself, but to pull someone from it, to turn him. She was a Kami-damned vamp, biting him to make him more like her own kind.

Yet as he continued to delve inside her, pressing between her legs and circling against her clit, she felt her body careen over the cusp of an orgasm. Bulma's eyes fluttered shut as she squealed her release. Every nerve ignited up from the tips of her toes and rushed through her thighs, tightening around him. She squeezed every last inch of pleasure that raked through her small frame with their lips pressed together. When it was gone, spent, he didn't move. Neither of them did. They just laid there, a tangle of limbs, trembling and exhausted. Her fingers ran through his hair as his tail swished to and fro.

* * *

Viciously, he scrubbed at his skin with a damp cloth until it was raw in places, as if trying to remove the outer layers. It wouldn't come off. The stench of their unholy deed stuck to him like a bad rash. It was in the very air he breathed, slipped through his pores to infect his insides, making him irrational and weak. Why the fuck did he do that? His mind was held captive by the girl, an unwitting host to a deadly parasite.

He stopped his frantic scrubbing, catching his own reflection in the bathroom mirror. It was thin... too thin. Hardly recognizable from the powerful monster he once was. Even as he took in the sharpened angles of his face, its pale pallor, the rings under his eyes, his mind flashed through images and sensations of its own: of Tarble's brat bent over a table of books; of his raven-haired earthling, red in the face while she shouted; of vast farmland, its straight mounds of soil stretched long beneath the rumble of a large contraption that smelled like toxic fumes. They flickered inside his head like the room's fluorescent bulbs.

"Fuck you! Get out of my head!" he cried, smashing his forehead against the mirror with a crunch.

This was all Tarble's fault. If he hadn't come back to distract his focus, he would be stronger. Maybe he wouldn't have fallen victim to the lure of some blue-haired hussy. Maybe he'd have enough ki by now to kill them all, the entire planet of pathetic creatures.

He lifted his head from the cratered web of glass. His face a kaleidoscope of blood and black eyes reflected in the mirror's mangled pieces.

Outside, he heard her beep into the room, heard the rustle of the paper bag she carried. Vegeta locked the door. He pressed his back against the wall, sliding down to his seat to sit and stew with his head between his knees, watching crimson droplets color the floor tiles between his boots.

"Vegeta?" She knocked at the door.

"Fuck off, earthling."

She tried the door handle. "Is something wrong? Are you okay?"

"I won't warn you again!" The fact that he was warning her at all proved just how low he'd fallen.

"Vegeta, come out! Talk to me!"

He could sense her body pressed up against the door and shot a ki ball through the damn thing, a mere inch from where she stood.

She screamed, of course, but she wasn't really afraid of him. Who would be? She was mad, just mad. Her face appeared in the hole, all twisted-up in a mix of wrath and worry, shrieking in her own tongue before she finally found her words.

"You fucking asshole! What the fuck is wrong with you? You could have killed me!"

"I meant to," he lied.

Not even she believed him, dismissing his words as she took in his appearance, placing her palm over the edge of the hole. If it was large enough, she'd have climbed through it to get to him. Instead she observed him in silence, scowling and jutting out her bottom lip with concern.

"Let me help you." The soft whisper with which she spoke made him feel more pathetic than he already did. Ugh... she felt sorry for him. She wanted to touch him, he knew. Coddle him, wrap her little arms around his neck in one of her hugs, kiss him, probably. Gods, the act itself was so foreign, so pitiful. If he opened the door, he would surely let her do it too. He was pitiful.

"Haven't you done enough?" he sneered, spinning his back to her, dropping his head to his forearms that were braced on top of his knees.

Bulma stared through the hole in the door, taking in the destruction of the room and the man crouched within it: the broken mirror, scorch marks along the walls, blood splattered over the sink and smeared along the tiles.

He was worried, and she'd admit she was too. Time was running short, and with only as much ki to lob through the hollow metal door, they were hardly in a position to escape.

"You need to eat," she said, mustering as much hope as she could conjure into her voice as if that was the answer. But who was she kidding? Not even she could fake that kind of optimism. The prince merely grunted in a tone that agreed her suggestion was stupid.

She really thought he would recover. Even as the days closed in, she believed, maybe naïvely, that he would build himself back up. But hope was a double-edged sword. It made the journey bearable, but made confronting a failed outcome that much harder. Were they so far past it? Bulma retraced the past few weeks in her mind, wondering what might have gone wrong.

Two days still remained. Even if Strickland returned, he was just another human. He wouldn't be immune to the Saiyan Prince's wrath if he encountered it.

But it was the uncertainty of Strickland's plans that worried her, hitting play on his paused project. There was no way they'd be given the undisturbed privacy to which they'd become accustomed. The general had something up his sleeve that she knew meant losing access and control over Vegeta's fate. Worse, he'd wrench her hand, stand over her shoulder, make her carry out his demented deeds out of spite. He was a petty, contemptuous man. If she refused, he'd call her a traitor, throw her in a dark hole on some offshore prison to wait out the rest of her miserable life. His presence loomed like a thunderhead.

As if her own worries weren't enough to make her nauseous, watching Vegeta sulk in defeat on the bathroom floor wasn't helping matters. An idea would strike. With her, they always did.

Bulma stood to pace the room, to let the juices flow, so to speak. There was Goku, as a last resort. She'd encrypt a message tonight, ready to send if it came to that. But there was something else she couldn't shake: the private.

Stress and depression seemed to be served on tap. On top of Vegeta's current mood, Private Trunks had adopted a tight-lipped agitation since she confronted him in the barracks. He hardly spoke a word as he escorted her to and from the mess hall each day. A sullen child who didn't get what he wanted when he asked her too many inappropriate questions, now he'd been giving her the cold shoulder, opting for no conversation at all.

At first, she was glad for the private's attitude. After the first weeks he spent trying to glean information, he'd finally taken her advice. She'd been telling him all along that every question he whispered in her ear soaked up what little defense he had remaining. If he'd kept up his endless interrogation, his gifts, his sneaking around—especially knowing what he already knew—it'd be hard to bat off charges as an accomplice unless he was a brilliant liar. But the boy reminded her far too much of those Saiyans, both of them, to ever be good at lying. He'd end up rotting away in a cell next to hers if they were lucky.

But now, she needed him to dish. Whatever the hell Trunks was hiding, she needed to pry it out of him. He had information that could be useful, she was certain. He all but admitted it that night in the barracks. Why he was being so cryptic now, she couldn't venture a guess. Whenever she pried, he regurgitated the same excuses: that she wouldn't believe him, that it wasn't the right time. Well, motherfucker, time was just about up.


	10. The Future

**Chapter 10: The Future**

General Strickland scanned the latest medical report, clicking his tongue against the back of his teeth. There was nothing new. It was the same old rag the pretty doctor had been recycling for weeks.

"What do you make of this one?" He flung the tablet onto the keyboard where his lead scientist had been clicking away at whatever tasks he was assigned. There were a lot, but the old man seemed to have something to prove.

He swiped through the pages of data with a derisive snort. "I can run it against the others, but like I said, general, it's just a clever loop. The Briefs girl is more intelligent than her father, I'll admit. But she's still the same overconfident young woman she was years ago. I've always suspected the Briefs were hiding something. They can't be trusted. You should have brought the monkey to me."

Strickland grunted, standing to pace the small lab as he ground his teeth.

"Overconfidence, is that it?" He pinched his chin between the fingers of his good hand, ignoring the old man's boast. Intelligent, really? That's what the doctor thought? No, Briefs wasn't that smart; he could play the bitch like a fiddle.

He knew leaving the girl alone with that simpleton Hoffstead in charge was a gamble. Her obstinacy was a given. Combined with fragile femininity, she was bound to fail her mission. He expected it. No skin of his nose. As soon as he arrived at HQ to lead their latest project, he saw its potential far exceeded the asset in his home division.

Ki-less weapons, undetected and controlled by computer algorithms—these were the weapons of the future! The monkey was just a primitive waste of time now that he had the vile thing contained. Still, he appreciated the young doctor's resolve. It would make it that much more entertaining to watch her put the creature down and crack open its ribcage in the name of science. He smiled at the thought.

"I assure you, sir. If you give the monkey to me, just like we discussed–"

"No," Strickland interjected, the amused smile slipping from his lips as he was forced to look at the decrepit fool. There was no point in pitting the projects against each other like they'd planned. That thing was weak. And these androids, they were the opposite of the animal. "Send a memo to Western. We're going to dissect the asset, take it apart the day I return. Dr. Briefs will remain as lead."

"But general, if I might just say, I could use the monkey–"

"Doctor, do you think I'm deaf?" Strickland answered flatly.

"No sir, it's just–"

"Well, which is it? Am I deaf or retarded?"

The doctor babbled nervously, his grey mustache flapping with his upper lip. Strickland curled his own lip over his teeth in disgust, placing his hands, what was left of one, on his hips as he glowered over the weathered old clod. It was a shame, really. Briefs had so much potential.

"If I'm not mistaken, doctor, I just greenlit your wet dream. You should be thanking me. You can pack this shit up and head to Western's R&D," he said, twirling a mocking finger round the room before he made his way toward the door. "Maybe get that damn medal of honor you've been crying on about."

"General! It's just that–"

"Well, what?" Strickland spun around impatiently. He and his whole project were leaving in the morning. There was hardly time to pay heed to the deranged ramblings of the defunct Red Ribbon Army's lead lunatic. "Speak up, doctor. You got a mouthful of pussy hidden under that mustache?"

The scientist scoffed, sending the wiry hairs above his lips to flutter. "I've cracked her code!" he finally shouted.

The mangled fingers of Strickland's left hand froze on the door knob. Had he heard right? Had the old man decrypted the genius of that little blue harlot?

"She knows how to extract the ki into weapons! She's known for years! They wouldn't be nearly as strong as mine, of course, but if you'll oblige, we can use the monkey to improve my warriors. That is, if the creature is as powerful as you say."

"Years, is that so?" Strickland rubbed his jaw. He had to hand it to the shrewd bitch, she'd almost had him, but not quite. Clever, she was, but her weakness was the same as all the gods' fairer creatures. According to Hoffstead's reports, she'd shown affection for the vile thing, petted and cried over it like a little child weeping over some sick, stray kitten.

Risking her life for that creature? _Tch!_ The general shook his head in disbelief. Briefs was stupid, sentimental, and traitorous. For her deception, he'd make her pay in kind, tape her lids open if he had to. He'd force her witness the destruction of her beloved pet at the hands of Gero's innovations before he confined her to a solitary hell indefinitely. She'd be lost to civilization, a stray blip on the gods' timeless radar. She'd never see another soul for the rest of her miserable life unless he paid her a visit. The world was a sinful place, and Strickland wasn't ever going to let her forget that.

* * *

Vegeta tried to fall asleep in the bathroom, ignoring the riotous complaints of his stomach. Whatever tactics the earthling tried, he refused to give in, to leave the confines of the locked door that separated them. Food was her favorite tool, like he was some gods-damned puppy that could be lured by a chicken wing.

He also hadn't a clue what he hoped to accomplish by curling in on himself against the floor, staring at the dirty tiles. Training seemed pointless; just like food, it wasn't going to bring his ki back. Nor could he wrestle his brother's mind out of his skull. If he left the room, he'd be left with her, a stain on his name. For the first few hours he stewed over it all, cursing under his breath. Fuck Tarble, fuck the Earth girl and her guns, fuck the coward outside the door that shot them, fuck the damn ship that crashed him here, fuck the church, fuck the queen, fuck the Colds, and fuck this piss-ass universe all to hell. He couldn't hurt them, but he felt better simply by cursing them all. There was some satisfaction in that. Even his refusal to scratch away the dried blood that itched his face was oddly satisfying.

It wasn't until she came back, pleading through the hole about the soldier's midnight visit that he finally lifted his miserable body from the cold, hard tiles and unlocked the bathroom door. Confrontation in his weakened state, he wasn't about to light that match. Instead he followed her direction, locked himself back into the chains and taped the monitors to his chest. Why though? Was this some conditioned response, to lay down like a good dog when she asked him? He should just blast the cowardly fool and the woman in one go, be taken down by the darts in the hallway. That's the outcome he'd face in a day or two anyway if they tried to escape. At least the darts offered a pleasurable rush before they dunked him into a disconnected stupor. Gods, he almost missed the feeling, drifting away on that cloud across lush landscapes for hours on end. It was better than actually flying, effortless and soft.

The soldier came and went. The woman stood with her back against the hole in the bathroom door to hide it. Once he was gone, Vegeta wondered what he'd do next. The woman kept begging him to eat, but in refusing her despite his hunger, he felt some semblance of control. Instead, he unchained his limbs and leapt up to meet the fresher air of the ceiling duct. Maybe he could actually sleep if he breathed through the vent. She couldn't reach him up there.

* * *

With Strickland returning tomorrow, tempering Vegeta's mood was like trying to negotiate with a toddler. He wouldn't eat, wouldn't train, refused to come down from his perch, refused to even speak to her. Desperation was setting in. Her SOS for Goku was ready to hit send, just one tiny piece of encrypted data; a coded message sent to her father would set-off a chain of events that could lead to all their demises.

She would do it too, in a heartbeat, anything to save him now. This mess was her fault. Weapons aside, she drove Vegeta to madness. On top of the sweet promises of power she couldn't possibly provide, she lured the man's affections, crossed a perilous line she knew could only confuse his fragile psyche. He was an alien prince and her prisoner from another world with an entire system of beliefs and responsibilities she couldn't possibly comprehend, and yet she treated him like some high school crush, a thing to conquer, took advantage of his situation to fulfill her own stupid desires. She was awful. She knew she should have pushed him away. But it was too late to undo the mistake. She could only move forward.

Determined more than ever, Bulma set out to extract what information she could from the private. It didn't help that Trunks was on edge. Every exhale from the kid's lips was an annoyed, exaggerated sigh as he walked her to and from the mess hall.

Seeing an opportunity, Bulma was about to pull him away from the sidewalk to speak in private, when suddenly, she found herself in the narrow gap behind the Tank, face-to-face with him. How did he do that? A moment ago, she was about to drag him into this very space.

"Why haven't you left yet?" Trunks asked. The deep crease between his angled brows and the flat line of lips was scolding, like she was some misbehaved child.

He really reminded her of Vegeta, she realized, not just his expression, but his features: the ridge of his brow line, his high, defined cheekbones, the shape of his lips. Gods, she must be mental.

"Left where?" She suspected what he was asking, and didn't know why she played dumb. With all the mysteries Trunks seemed to know, he wondered why they hadn't made their escape.

"Come on, Bulma. We both want the same thing, and you're running out of time."

"Bulma," she repeated. It was strange he knew her first name. She doubted Vegeta even knew her name. She told him once, but either it didn't translate, or he didn't care. Shaking her head free of the thought, she looked back to the private's stony face. "He's not strong enough. He can't even crack the ceiling, let alone take down hundreds of armed guards. It's almost like he's given up. We need help, Trunks."

So nothing's changed then. Trunks knew it was a long shot, toying that much with fate. He hadn't really expected it to work, getting them out early the way they planned by giving them supplies, but he had to try. If Vegeta couldn't escape in the next twenty-four hours, he had just one more shot to change the course of history.

He pulled Bulma deeper into the alley by her elbow.

"Please, just tell me what you know," she begged as he tugged her along. "I can figure something out. I just need a breakthrough, and I think you're it. You know something, and maybe if we work together–"

"Look," Trunks said, spinning her around to face him. His hands pressed on top of her shoulders, shaking her lightly. "This could be the last time we ever speak, and like I said, you're not going to believe a word of it."

"Try me." Bulma's face dipped. Despite how worn and tired she seemed, he knew she would fight tooth and nail, even beyond sanity to get what she wanted out of life. She wasn't a quitter. She'd endure long after everyone else called it quits, even egg them on like an annoying cheerleader.

"_You_ sent me here," Trunks said. His eyes darted down the alley, not that a passerby would believe him anyway if there'd been one. He doubted even she would. "Almost twenty years from now, you invent a time machine, and you send me here to fix this one mistake."

"Fuck off!" Bulma tried to whack his hands away from her shoulders, but he wouldn't budge. Grabbing at his forearms, she squirmed angrily under his fists. "Gods dammit kid! You expect me to believe that you're some time traveler sent to help me? Am I that much of a joke to you people?"

"I told you that you wouldn't believe me Bulma. But you should." Trunks remained steadfast with his grip on her arms, hoping she'd wilt under them, believe him if he could give her proof. "In my time, when the Colds come, there's nobody here to stop them. Not even Goku."

The Colds, Goku: that was the ticket. Bulma stopped moving, frozen in place as she looked up at him in wonder. "How do you know Goku?"

"He's the closest thing to a father I ever had. He and ChiChi practically raised me, taught me how to fight. Goten and I were drafted to this division once the government's probes caught wind of the Cold's invasion. All the guys our age were."

Bulma was finally listening, still as a statue under his palms, her mouth agape. She was like a doll, waiting for her string to be pulled. It was clear she didn't know what to say and took his confession in silence.

"We're helpless. There's nobody to stop them. Not Goku, Goten, Krillin, Yamcha, Tien, Chiaotzu—we were the only fighters worth their salt, but nothing compared to Frieza's army. We hadn't fought against an army like that! We fought in tournaments for fun!"

Bulma nodded softly, like she was hearing him, but her face was still flush with disbelief. Her hands gripped his forearms like tiny vices.

"Look, they all thought you were crazy, thought you'd lost your mind. You locked yourself in the Capsule Corp. labs for almost two decades talking to a kami-damned ghost in some strange language! You ignored me!"

Trunks tried not to let his resentment show, but he couldn't help it. He was angry with her. Even though this version of her didn't know why, he felt the need to let her have it. His grip on her shoulders tightened, as if unaware of the pressure he could unleash on a small earthling like her. He didn't ease up until he saw her wince in pain. Even then, his tongue continued to lash.

"Always chain smoking, working on this damn machine, muttering about this one mistake you made you thought you could take back. For eighteen years, we all put up with it. I never knew you to be any different, but I cared anyway. More importantly, I believed you when everyone else wrote you off, when your own father handed the company to Gohan instead of you.

"Then, a minute too late, you finally did it! After everyone else was dead, you finally made this thing that could travel back. I jumped on board. I'd do anything to change the outcome I've lived. I'm your guinea pig, Bulma! I volunteered myself to travel here, to save Goku and the others, but also to save my father... and to save you from yourself."

"Vegeta?" she muttered. Her lips barely moved. It was a lot to digest, he knew, but the dumbstruck look on her face said it all. He was still here. Not vanished into ether. "You're... uh... my kid?" she asked.

"One and only," Trunks forced a smile.

Bulma stepped backward from his grip. Her hand brushed against her abdomen, raking her eyes over him like she was seeing him for the first time, searching his face for a resemblance. It was there, he knew, more hers than Vegeta's, if only for their fair features. You look just like your mother—that's what everybody said because they'd never met Vegeta. But she always claimed he looked like his father. It was the reason, he liked to believe, she was so distant, always pushing him away. It wasn't him. It wasn't personal. He was never a bad kid. She was a bad mother. But who could blame her? She murdered the love of her life by accident, and Trunks understood that he was a constant reminder of the fact. His face haunted her worse than both the burn on her palm and Vegeta's ghost she constantly spoke to in a foreign tongue.

Besides his self-absorbed grandparents, the Sons were the only real family Trunks ever had. But in his future, Goku and the other fighters were dead at the hands of the Colds. Two fathers dead, along with most of his friends. And his mother was sick and heartbroken for longer than he'd existed. He and Goten were the only ones left to defend them, just a couple of teenagers. It was hopeless.

"What was my mistake, Trunks? Why did I send you here?" she asked, her voice shaking, afraid to hear the answer.

"I don't know how time travel works. You don't either. You made me promise not to interfere too much. You always said Vegeta was... complicated, being an alien prince and all, and you didn't want me to intervene in case I messed things up between you. Afraid I'd vanish, I guess."

Her cheeks flushed. "Well, we're past that now. But he won't even speak to me." Bulma choked on her words, looking down the long alley to the grassy courtyard with watery eyes. Whether she knew it yet or not, she loved the damn Saiyan, his father, and the end of their short affair was fast approaching.

"Bulma, look at me." Trunks took her shoulders again. "You can do this. You may not have been a good mother to me, but I always respected you because you were strong. You're the most courageous woman I've ever known."

"Thanks, kid." She shrugged, her voice cracking as she finally let it all sink in. Tears flowed freely down her face, dripping off her chin. "What the fuck? I'm so sorry Trunks," she said, wiping them on her sleeve, like she was embarrassed by her show of emotion. She quickly stomped it down, looked up at him with reddened eyes and her jaw set firmly with the determination he knew so well. "So, what is it? How do I save him?"

Trunks smiled and wrapped his mother up in his arms in the first heartfelt hug of his life. The feeling of her arms cinched around him, even over his bullet proof vest, was like coming home. She always said Vegeta was obsessed with her hair, and he always understood why. The most vivid shades of blue rippled over her shoulders in a cove of tranquil waves. He buried his face into her soft mane and breathed it in. Though in this time, she smelled like the flowery perfume of shampoo instead of stale cigarettes.

A group of soldiers stopped to gawk near the alley entrance, cutting their reunion short. "Don't stop the androids," Trunks whispered against her ear before he was forced to pull away. "That was your mistake."


	11. The Beast

**Chapter 11: The Beast**

Electrical storms raged in the planet's atmosphere, shocks of light that tore through purple clouds. They snaked and forked across the sky with endless claps of thunder. Rain fell in cold, heavy sheets, soaking through the material of his suit. Vegeta ignored the chill in his bones. He'd made it to the rogue planet's Great Temple where the emperor slept in stasis. He knew the shapeshifter's weakness: light energy of any kind in this dark world inflicted serious damage, enough of it could kill. Vegeta was just the being to eliminate the threat and restore the planet's vitality, reign it into the Saiyan Empire's growing orbit. Its energy source was valuable. Phazon energy gave life to dark, sunless planets across the galaxies at a hefty price, and Planet Aether was its source.

Intel on the emperor was slim. Vegeta managed to defeat or evade most of the shadowlings that guarded its temple, but the tentacles that formed around the gargantuan brain of their leader came in thick, thrashing waves. By blasting one, three more would appear. Dark, morpheus balls of energy squirted from every orifice that dotted the underbellies of its limbs. One touch from the inky substance, and he'd be good as dead—liquefied, absorbed by the creature's suckers into its gooey, ectoplasmic head.

Vegeta felt his ki surge around him as he maneuvered through the web of tentacles and gobs of dark energy, dashing and blasting past them all to reach the creature's jelly-like brain.

A giant arm came thrashing down. Vegeta evaded the attack with an inch to spare, shooting the limb into sticky pieces. Another at his back, but that too, he ducked in a flash, twisting his body toward the temple's rocky ceiling. His blast castrated the long limb from the emperor's head. It crashed to the floor below with a rippling thwack, buckling the stone tiles around the squid's amputated arm.

Not thinking, just moving. Energy ignited through his pores as he tore past every obstacle, light tracing his wake like the tail of a comet.

Then he woke, his face pressed against the vent, his teeth sore from clenching them in his sleep. It was just there, wasn't it? His ki in his own memory, not Tarble's! Almost close enough to grasp, it flooded him in his dream, but now he felt nothing but a phantom, foggy memory of what he used to be.

"FUCK!" he screamed, but even that was sucked up into the room's soundproofing. He couldn't win. This gods-forsaken place had stolen everything, and he couldn't even echo his rage across its walls to ease his frustration.

Vegeta slipped off the edge of the duct to the floor below, pacing the empty space with the anxiety of a caged tiger—from one edge of the room to other, slinking back and forth with his tail thrashing wildly behind him. His fists clenched against his sides, spitting bits of ki between his knuckles. Light crackled in his palms in sync with every exhale.

Fuck this. Fuck them all. If he didn't already know what lay in death, he would claw down the walls of this space and meet his end on the other side. But he was stuck, trapped inside the lab with just the woman's empty promises. The same question repeated on a never-ending loop: Why did he end up here? Of all places, here: Earth. Tarble's planet. Was this his punishment for questioning the Saiyan Gods? Karma finally exacting revenge for his heretical nature? Crash him here, trap and poison him, leave him to rot with Tarble's memories? The brother they stole from him.

No. Gods, no. This wasn't his fault. It was theirs, the council—their obstinacy in holding to their stupid, selfish ways and not embracing the future, their denial of every gods-damned proposal he put forth to bring the Saiyans into a new age of innovation, of progress. That fucking ship!

Vegeta stopped pacing to stand before his pod. He could barely remember closing the door on the cursed ball of trash. It felt so long ago. What had Raditz even said, the joke? He couldn't remember.

Too bad that worthless third-class hadn't been the one to crash here. Nobody would miss him on the battlefield. If his com-link worked, he'd call the idiot to bust him out. Raditz wasn't anything special, but at least he could be trusted.

Vegeta glanced at the girl's computer. It was still on, scrolling data up the screen from the vital monitors. Maybe he could fix the communications himself. Unlike the girl, he grew-up troubleshooting the damn thing. What did she say was wrong with it? Maybe she hadn't. He couldn't remember. Those conversations were hazy thanks to her drugs.

Vegeta shot over to the desk, tearing the scouter from his face. He plugged it into her machine to run the diagnostics. Why hadn't he thought of this before? Because he believed the girl's promises? Because he went along with her stupid wish to save the innocents? Fuck them. None of them mattered.

The scouter's data filled the screen. Green lights blinked down the board, all but the very last: the network. That sly bitch. The com-link worked just fine, all but his access to the empire's network. It was the only thing down. She had to have known, but kept the information to herself. For what? For the lives of a few thousand soldiers? All he had to do was log in again. He found his way around the foreign navigation easy enough to key in his code. Thick red characters blinked onto the screen. It didn't work. He tried again, but same thing.

_Oh hell no._ Vegeta ran a hand through his hair, eyes bugging at the bold red symbols he knew meant he'd been denied access. This was no accident, not karma come back to bite him, not the gods' wrath. This was the work of the blessed queen and her council of minions. They meant to strand him here with Tarble, some prison planet for failed princes.

"FUCK!" His fingers curled tightly around his fists and smashed against the keyboard, obliterating it into tiny shards of plastic that scattered in every direction.

The vein along his temple twitched with his heavy pulse as he found himself staring into the dark cabin of his ship. The console had all been stripped by the girl. Only the upholstery remained intact. Ki sparked between his fingers, itching for vengeance. The heap of metal that led him to this place, that and the woman's guns, they ruined him, destroyed what he was supposed to be, punished him slowly and painfully for thinking he could change the empire's ways.

Vegeta roared and thrust a ball of ki inside, watching the upholstery poof into bits of cotton. He lobbed another and another like it was an enemy combatant. Screaming at the top of his lungs, he pitched ki into the pod and watched the insides splinter into smoky shards. When nothing was left but charred bits inside, he kept going, determined to turn the whole ball to ashes. He wanted it gone from his existence, obliterated like any other enemy. Before, he'd be able to blast the thing in one go, crater the whole world around it with barely a flick. But now, ball after ball of energy felled at the outer hull, a hailstorm of dents in a tin can that only spurred his rage. It poked the sleeping beast inside him like staring at a holy moon. The animal's wild fury shot up his spine with every blow, tinting his vision in red. He almost didn't notice the door's beep, but he knew she was there before she even opened it. Her claws sunk deeper into his mind than Tarble's.

* * *

As soon as the lab door opened, Bulma heard the firestorm happening inside. Quickly, she darted in, snapping it shut behind her. What in Kami's name was he thinking blasting off ki like that, knowing she was due back at any moment? Even within the dampened walls, the booms of ki seeped out the cracked door like cannons.

"Gods, Vegeta! Are you trying to get us killed? What the fuck are you doing?"

She realized he wasn't listening. In a wicked tantrum, he hurled spheres of energy at the spaceship in quick succession. Though this wasn't his usual fit, this was… Was he even aware that she was here?

Bulma slowly stepped up behind him, extending a hand to touch his shoulder. But before her fingertips grazed his skin, he was in front of her. Spun around in a spark, they were suddenly face to face. His eyes ablaze, his pupils dilated clean over the near-black of his irises, a fiery red glow was lit behind them.

"Vegeta?" The person she knew was hardly recognizable in the bitter darkness that shadowed his features, morphed into another creature. He pinned her into place, stealing her breath with a deadly, red glare, a predator who's prey wandered into his vortex. Bulma reached out, as if she could tame his rage, jolt him back to sanity simply by touching him. But he grabbed her wrist and crushed it in his hard fist.

"Ach!" A shock of pain shot up her arm and down every fingertip with an intensity that nearly brought her to her knees. Every bone in her small wrist cracked under the pressure, splintering into smaller pieces as she screamed. "Stop it! You fucking asshole! You're hurting me!"

It was like he couldn't hear her. Before she could blink, he hooked his other hand around her thigh and flipped her to the ground. The wind knocked clean from her lungs as her back hit the concrete. Bulma tried to catch her breath, clasping the broken bones of her wrist in her opposite hand, but the prince had pounced on top her. Straddling her legs, he tore her hands apart to pin them over her head as another wave of pain ricocheted from her broken bones.

"Fuck you! You're insane! Let me go, you monster!" She thrashed under his weight, but with her arms restrained, every movement was excruciating. This wasn't him. He was possessed or something! She tried to convince herself of the fact once she'd stopped fighting his grip, no longer able to withstand the movements of her shattered bones. She stared up at Vegeta's deadly visage with fearful, watering eyes. "Vegeta, please stop! This isn't you! You don't want to hurt me. You never wanted to!"

His head tilted, like he was finally listening. For a moment Bulma thought she'd gotten through, but he thrust his face to hers. The dark eyes she'd come to trust were filmed in a glowing red, and his voice was doused with poison, low and smooth as he sneered, "Oh princess..."

He adjusted his grip on her wrists into one hand, letting the other brush softly against her cheek. "You have me confused with your precious Goku."

His fingers traced the line of her chin, softly taunting. She squirmed and turned her face away. This person wasn't him, and she didn't want to be touched by this monster. "Vegeta, you're out of your kami-damned mind! This isn't you! Let me go!"

"Or what?" he asked. She felt his hand slip from her chin to wrap around her neck, fingering her pulse. "Your darts aren't here to save you now, are they?" He squeezed, hard, cutting off her air.

She couldn't respond. Couldn't breathe. Thrashing with all her might she tried to fight against his warm grip, but he only tightened his fist to crush her windpipe. No, this was all wrong. Trunks was wrong; this wasn't supposed to happen!

A fire lit inside in her lungs that burned like acid. Her racing heart kicked with such a force, it pummeled hard against her temples. Dark spots blotted her vision, and her flailing limbs began to slacken. She couldn't even feel them. She could only feel the pressure of his weight in her lap and heat igniting in the hand around her throat. The skin beneath his grip began to blister under the ember of his palm.

But suddenly, he let go, the hot pressure of his hand replaced by wind that raced to fill her lungs. The air poked like needles as she choked back to life. She arched her back trying to toss him off her, chest heaving with sharp sips of air. But the Saiyan wouldn't budge from where he sat atop her hips. He wasn't paying her any attention.

Vegeta was… glowing! A halo of pinkish light surrounded his body like a second skin. But he didn't seem to notice. He was panting, the muscles of his back contracting with heavy breaths as he stared into the hand that strangled her, eyes still wide and dilated. The galaxy in his palm was lit like a flare, brighter than the energy that danced around his dark features. Her senses returning, Bulma realized her own hand glowed as she lifted the shaking extremity before her face. It was hot. Hotter than the air inside her lungs, the pain of it overwhelmed her far more than the splintered fragments of her wrist as a magenta light burst from the galaxy's core.

Vegeta, finally able to lift his gaze from his palm's bright star, dragged his attention to the trembling earthling beneath him, still struggling for air. Her bloodshot eyes soaked into her own luminous brand. Her wrist was beginning to swell, and the busted vessels in her neck stained her skin. He could almost see the shape of his hand that colored her throat black and blue.

Ki lapped over his body in thick waves. It surged through every cell with an energy that exceeded anything he felt before. But it was bittersweet. As much as he should have wanted to bask in the glory of its return, he couldn't. He could only stare at the bruised girl that quaked below him with regret—frozen over her, watching the light in her palm begin to fade, sink back into the swirling scar, same as his own. He'd never felt sorry a day in his life, not when he threatened the queen, his own mother, the act that called for his head. Nothing. Nobody was immune to his vengeance. None but her.

How had this creature managed to seep so far into his conscience? He didn't want her dead. He wanted her with him to his bitter end. Even if they miraculously made it out of this place, he was sure of it.

Their race, at least not the royals or elites, they didn't succumb to such attachments, not by the books. His brother was the first and only thing Vegeta cared about that wasn't himself. And they spent years beating the feeling out of him, long after Tarble was gone. From the moment his brother was born, they were bonded on a plane neither the monarchs nor the priests understood. Always present in one-another's heads, existing together as if they were the same being. The loss he felt as Tarble was ripped from his memories was like losing a limb. Only his gods-damned nursemaid offered the kind of comfort that let him almost move past it. After losing a child of her own, the third-class nanny sopped him up like he was her own baby, called him her cubby, held his battered body tight. But she was taken from him too, eventually. The broken girl between his knees woke some part of him that had been all but disconnected: the ability to feel anything but hatred, or at best ambivalence for another thing that wasn't himself. And he tried to kill her. For what? He didn't know.

The vents above them hissed, but he hardly noticed, focused instead on the pale, icy color that fell over her lips, the shape of them as scratchy words tried to escape.

"Veg… eta... I'm... I'm…" she wheezed. Pink pigment seeped back into them to color the airless blue. But looking at her now, he felt only the unfamiliar disgust of his own actions. She didn't deserve it, he knew. She was a tiny bird, the way her voice normally sprung from her pretty lips. He made her this hoarse, fractured thing incapable of words.

The earthling's lids drooped over her eyes. Drawing ragged breaths, she fell asleep.

Reigning in his ki, Vegeta made to pick the girl up, to carry the broken bird to her to her cot, but his head was foggy. He was feeling drowsy too. His vision blurred, splitting her image in two. He barely managed to slip his arms around her before it went black altogether, and he collapsed around the girl on the concrete.

* * *

Trunks resumed his post against the wall, watching his mother's back continue toward the armored lab. Was she going to tell Vegeta about him? A part of him hoped she would, as if Vegeta knowing of his existence would fill all the empty gaps in his life, make him feel like less of a stray.

Faint booms traveled down the hall from the lab's direction, but only he seemed to notice. The other soldiers remained frozen, without so much as a shift in weight between the tired soles of their feet. To his Saiyan senses, the blasts of ki were clear as thunder through the open door where Bulma slipped inside. They were small, compared to his own, compared to Goku's. The booms that reached his ears meant Vegeta was still weak, maybe having a temper tantrum. Bulma's future self said he was prone to those. But it meant he was trying, didn't it? He hadn't given up completely.

Trunks waited in the silent hallway, fidgeting against the wall, an itch here, a twitch there. It was impossible to play the part of a dutiful soldier knowing that his parents were trapped just fifty yards away.

Many times since he'd arrived in this timeline, a dark urge inside him nearly stole his head: the urge to blast his fellow soldiers to their graves. He often tried to convince himself that killing the men that stood beside him would serve a greater good in the end. It would mean they stood a chance against the Colds in the future—with Vegeta free, and with the androids' power. He only had to pick the right moment. But he couldn't do it. He wasn't a killer. He'd never killed anyone in his life. And these men, they were his comrades. In killing them, he'd be no better than the cold-blooded creatures that terrorized his future.

So he stood, impatiently waiting, when a sudden flicker of energy ripped through his cells. Trunks glanced down at his hand that was gripped solidly around the barrel of a ki-gun. He swore he saw his own flesh blink in and out of sight. But the sensation was over almost as quickly as it'd come.

The sound of footsteps traveled from the adjacent hall, two pairs of feet on a mission. Trunks tipped his sensitive ears to listen as they steadily approached. Apart from the strict shift changes among the men and Bulma's daily excursions, nobody traveled these halls.

Around the corner they appeared, General Strickland striding with purpose down the long corridor towards the Tank's labs. An old man with long grisly, grey hair followed at his heels. Gero, Trunks knew. But what were they doing here so soon? They weren't supposed to arrive until tomorrow. His steely scowl followed them as they passed.

He strained to hear the general's words with Hoffstead at the smaller lab's entrance. A gas? Was that what Hoffstead said? Their dark silhouettes disappeared behind the door.

"Dude, lay back." His comrade whacked his shoulder as he leaned past them from his post. But Trunks couldn't bring himself to behave for a full second before he was stepping away from position, nearly standing in the middle of the hallway. The blood drained from his face as he watched Strickland carry Bulma, unconscious, across the hall into the main tank, shortly followed by Hoffstead with Vegeta out cold over his shoulder.

_No, no, no._

"Trunks!" his comrade called again. He barely paid a glance to the confusion on the faces of his fellow soldiers before he shot down the hallway towards the exit with the super speed of a Saiyan—leaving the men in his wake to mutter amongst themselves about the sudden disappearance of the strange new soldier with the brown, furry scar above his butt and head of purple hair.

He knew the way to Goku's, but it was far. Even as he flew, thrusting ki behind him like a jet engine, he could only hope to make it there and back in time to make a difference.


	12. The Androids

**Chapter 12: The Androids**

Bulma came-to with a pain that shot from her wrist and radiated into every fingertip. Haze filtered from her eyes to register the pair of leather loafers in front of her nose. She was on the floor, not the concrete of the lab where she passed out, but the thin carpet of the control room in the main tank.

"There she is!" Strickland's voice rang down from above to fill her with dread. "If you're done napping, Dr. Briefs, we'd appreciate it if you could join us."

Bulma pressed herself upright with her good hand, resting her back against the wall behind her. She glared up at the general, trying to push words through her throat's dented pipes. "Where is he?"

The general laughed, clicking his tongue against the back of his teeth with a slow shake of his head. "You scientists, you're all like artists. You fall in love with your playthings."

He glanced over his shoulder to the man at his back, a man Bulma immediately recognized as Dr. Gero. That old fool. Of course he had something to do with this.

Dr. Gero had been trying to best her father before she was even born—jealous of his innovations, of her father's success in the private tech sector, success that made him the wealthiest man on Earth. More than a decade ago, Gero slipped into the waiting arms of a criminal underworld. He provided the Red Ribbon Army with a dangerous breed of weapons: androids. Not surprisingly, those weapons were put down by Goku, along with the rest of the organization, and Gero disappeared into oblivion, or so she thought.

Androids, she should have known. A hallmark of the corrupt old man, and Trunks told her to spare them. She hadn't forgotten.

Strickland pulled her scathing attention from the scientist working behind him. He squatted down to meet her face to face. His lips curled up at the corners, gloating over her appearance. With a slow shake of his head, he caught her chin lightly between his fingers, tipping it up to examine her neck.

"You know, I can't figure it out myself. You're nice to look at, but you're disobedient, and you squawk too much." His fingers floated from her chin to softly brush along the bruises that circled her throat. "Personally, I prefer the silent types. From the looks of it, your monkey lover does too."

"Fuck you," Bulma croaked. She slapped his hand away, but Strickland's eyes bugged, and he smiled in twisted delight.

"Ah, see what I mean! Such a frosty little bitch. I bet your daddy never taught you the word 'no'. Raised by soft nannies, is that it? Or'd he just let you run wild like that beast in there?" Strickland cocked his head to the plasma shields across the room and shrugged his brows, his smile growing wider. "I'd be happy to give you a lesson."

He pulled a small remote from his pocket and held it between his fingers. One big button and a small dial below it, the device itself was no bigger than his thumb.

"You see this right here is some sophisticated tech. Never did find out its original inventor, but eh… you're in the business. You know how that goes with these shy, artist types. They all have their secrets."

He batted a hand, stretching back to his feet to tower above her, tossing and catching the little remote in his palm. He nodded his head toward the plasma shield, knowing her curiosity would have her follow.

As Bulma approached the clear panes behind him, the general picked up her green translator from the control console, fitting it over his face.

Vegeta was alive and well. At the far side of the open room, his hand pressed against the small porthole of one of two identical, coffin-like tanks, peering at what was housed inside them. He wasn't hurt, nor did he appear to be in any distress. Curious, he seemed, more than anything else. His tail swung behind him with gentle flicks like a cat watching a fishbowl. The only difference in his appearance was a single, silver band that wrapped around his neck.

Strickland flicked on the com-feed between the control room and the Tank's large domed space. "Did you miss me, monkey boy?" he asked. "Or did my doctor keep you sufficiently entertained?"

Vegeta tore his hand away from the silver pods and sauntered into the middle of the room. He crossed his arms before the people on the other side of the clear pane, a smirk tugging up at the corner of his lips. The general he knew, and the silent coward in the corner, but the old, grey creep, he was new. His eyes roved over Vegeta without blinking. Vegeta flicked his gaze to the woman's for the smallest second, if only to acknowledge her presence alongside them.

"Nice, isn't she?" The general tipped his head toward the girl. "Quite the generous host from what I hear."

The insinuation was clear. The girl shuddered and flicked her head away as the general twirled a lock of her hair between his fingers. A rumble bubbled deep inside Vegeta's chest. If it was possible to forget that he tried to kill her, he would. Gods, he would take it back. He felt protective of the earthling. He didn't want her harmed, not by himself, and especially not by the hands of the self-righteous piece of shit that tortured him. His ki ignited, blanketing his body with its crackling aura. But same as when he first woke in this space just minutes ago, the energy he released was heavily throttled, sucked-up by the collar around his neck.

"Careful, now," the general warned. He tossed a little remote in the air and caught it. "As I'm sure you've noticed, you've been donned with the latest fashion. Pet Tech, maybe that's what I'll call it… Toss the idea by my wife at least, she deals with the little shit eaters in my household… Anyway, that trendy little collar of yours is courtesy of your caretaker."

The man twisted around to gaze at the girl with a smug smile, only to be met by a string of native curses spat from her fiery tongue. Hoarse and hollow as her voice was, the Saiyan felt his pulse lift pace with her temper. Even beyond a wall, she controlled the very beat of his heart. Though, the general just smiled down her curses, same as Vegeta would do, as if he relished in her little battle cries.

"She's so smart, this one," he continued his sermon, thumbing the girl's direction. "Figured out all by herself how to suck up all that energy of yours and store it for later use. Say, for example, a bad dog tries to bite, I just press this button here. Boom! Simple. Instead of losing my hand, you lose your head. Like a doggy bag stuffed with your own shit. Ain't that fun?"

The general waited, clearly hoping the Saiyan would engage his war of words now that he had the scouters. But Vegeta said nothing. Kept his lips pressed and his arms locked against his chest.

"Suit yourself. This is how it works. You fight, maybe you live another day. You refuse, boom. You pull any funny tricks, boom. The crusty mustache to my left here might just be smarter than the little jezebel you sunk your dick into. I'd say good luck, but…"

The general waved an arm at the elderly man holding out the woman's scouter. The man took it eagerly, barely securing the device to his face before he spoke.

"Ah! We meet again!" the old man said. "It's been a long time, Goku!"

_Goku?_ Vegeta winged a brow at the symbols he recognized as his brother's Earth name. It seemed Tarble fought this man's weapons before and won. Even with his ki throttled, he was stronger than his brother. Vegeta didn't dignify the man with a response, kept his stoic stance as his energy itched below his skin in anticipation. It'd been too long. He needed a good fight. The faces behind the portholes, he couldn't sense their power levels. Maybe they'd been masked. But still, gods, he hoped they were strong.

"I've made some upgrades since your last opponents," the old man said as he triggered the pods to open.

The fighters within awoke, stepping outside their shells with a lazy grace—teenagers, two of them. Even as they strolled into the room to stand next to Vegeta, he couldn't get a read on their power. They looked weak, like any other earthlings—a male and a female, their eyes both icy blue. Crossing their arms and cocking their hips alongside him, they glared at the old man through the pane.

"Hello my children!" The old man clapped. "I have a gift for you!"

"Oh look. Another fight. Joy…" The blonde girl drawled listlessly as she turned to eye Vegeta up and down.

The hairs along his tail lifted as she looked him over, as if he was some whore in a window. He thrashed it in her direction and turned away.

"Yes! But I assure you, this one will be worthy!" the old man babbled. "Goku has always been very determined to stop us. But you, my children, you will destroy him!"

"I see." The male teen circled behind him, giving Vegeta the same examination as the female. "What do you say, 18? You up for a fight?"

"Depends. What's in it for us?" The girl looked up at the old man with a shrug.

"For you? Nothing! I'm your creator, you do as I say! I gave you life, and I can take it away!" The flustered old goon lifted a device, almost identical to the remote the general used to threaten Vegeta. A square silver piece with a small button and a dial.

"You two have always displayed a tendency for disobedience, but I have since modified your programming. I will no longer tolerate your insubordination! You will fight, or I will turn you into bricks!"

Oh, they were machines, not humanoids. That's how he masked their powers. Droids existed throughout the cosmos, mostly as sex bots or servants, trash that didn't warrant a read if he'd bothered to give them one. But he'd heard stories of piss-ant soldiers that wandered into a brothel only to have their dicks blown off by an enemy droid. Served them right, in his opinion. Strong warriors letting down their guard post-mission only to be killed or castrated at the hands of a ki-less robot. Good riddance. He'd fight these Earth droids, gladly.

"Well sister," the male droned, "seems we have no choice." The teens scoffed at their creator, tossing annoyed glances between them.

"Fine." The girl gave her attention back to Vegeta. "You ready, little man?"

Vegeta kept his mouth shut. They were hoping he'd speak, try to use his words against him to get into his head, same as the general used his earthling. The whole lot of them searched for his weaknesses, and he refused to give anything away.

He wound his tail around his waist and stepped back from the androids, ready to battle. Though he'd barely raised his fists when the female came hurtling toward him. How stupid. Vegeta easily blocked her with his forearms and kneed her in the gut, hard enough to launch the android feet into the air. She doubled over with a breathless gasp. Just one swift hop above her, and his fists struck between her shoulder blades, sending the android to belly flop the floor.

This was the best they could do? Shit, these androids were empty cans. He met the male midair, dodging the kick that came striding toward him with barely a twist of his torso. His elbow knocked the teen against his black bob of hair and shot him face-first to meet his sister on the ground below.

"No children! Get up! You are better than this!"

Vegeta smirked, reading their creator's cries. The androids pressed themselves to stand. Touching back down to the floor, back to where they started, he waited for them to recover.

Eying their injuries, Vegeta wondered: if they were androids, how were they bleeding? Robots don't bleed. The male wiped the red substance from his nose and shook his head.

"Congratulations, monkey. Perhaps the old man underestimated you. Ready for round two?"

Whatever the thing was, it didn't wait for an answer. The idiot shot himself toward Vegeta again. He tried to land a punch to the Saiyan's face, but it was caught one-handed, only managing to slide Vegeta's feet inches backward against the tiles. The android flipped his lower body beneath himself, but couldn't even land a kick. Vegeta grabbed his ankle and shot putted the thing clear across the room into the opposite wall.

Were these really the best weapons the earthlings could come up with? Even with the collar, Vegeta was operating at a fraction of his power, yet they couldn't manage to land a hit. Were they even trying?

The girl was finally ready for another go, but she seemed so apathetic, circling around him with her arms crossed. It was infuriating; they were playing him, he was almost certain.

Vegeta couldn't hold back his voice any longer. If they weren't going to actually fight him, what was the point?

"Gods-damned robots! Are you poor fools actually going to fight me?"

"Oh, he speaks." The female's tone lifted with her icy stare. It seemed their program could understand him. "Yes, well, it appears our energy's been nerfed, same as yours. Maybe if we turn this fight up evenly, we can finally have some fun."

Just like that, the android sunk a punch. A small one, barely a scratch against his solid jaw, but still… Vegeta hadn't seen it coming. He spun back to meet her blow for blow at the back of her neck, watching the girl spill to the floor, rolling over herself, once, twice, three times before she hopped back to her feet.

"You insipid brats! What's the matter with you?" the grey man shouted over the scouter. "Why don't you kill him?"

"Programming, I'd guess." The male stepped up to meet his sister. "He's not the same little twerp you described, Gero."

The girl laughed, "In powers only, let's be clear."

The twins waited a breath, casting sly glances between them. It wouldn't work. That overused taunt had long been eradicated from his thick skin. His entire life, he'd been met with the same low blow from the tongues of his enemies. Every creature in the cosmos underestimated him because of his small stature. No matter. Their old man could turn their power up to infinity and he would still annihilate them—junkyard trash compared to all the beings he'd faced throughout his young life.

"Try me, shit cans."

The twins were suddenly around him. Vegeta blocked the female's kick, but the male at his back feigned a punch to his face before landing a solid blow against Vegeta's ribs with a crunch.

At the fracture of his bones, Vegeta lit his ki to rage. He took to the air, spitting blasts from his palms. He nailed the boy in the chest. His body buckled against the fortified floor below. But the girl threw a bomb of her own, hurling Vegeta into his own crater. The armored tiles ripped-up below him as he skidded to a stop. Gods it stung. But it was nothing compared to the fights he'd been in before. If only he had control of his ki, he could crater the entire place in one go. But no, he had to play this little handicapped game. Fine, a challenge, he'd take it.

The girl was flying towards him again. Vegeta flipped from the hole in the ground to meet her head on. Energy leapt across the vast, open room to collide halfway between them. It shot from their palms. His magenta beam of ki met the cold white energy of the female android. It wasn't more than a heartbeat, and his ki overwhelmed her, shooting her against the wall with enough force to splinter the atomic-grade materials around her like confetti.

Neither of the androids, or whatever these creatures were, made to stand.

"What's the matter, bitch? Batteries running low?"

"Oh Goku, I'm enjoying this side to you! So hungry, so certain. If it's a fight you want, I'll gladly show you what my babies are really capable of."

"That so?" Vegeta turned his attention to the grey man behind the plasma shield. "Well, old timer, don't hold back."

"Vegeta don't!" the earthling croaked in Saiygo. He watched the general fist the material of his woman's scrubs at her shoulder in warning. She was not allowed to speak, he presumed, not without the threat of his head. The earthling's mouth formed a hard line as she shot an eyeful of daggers at the man.

Gods, Vegeta would give anything to tear the general's head clean off and set it at her feet. He would do it too. All three of the decrepit creatures that stood around her were begging for his vengeance. For what he did to her, he probably deserved the same. But she was rooting for him still. She never stopped. His little cheerleader stood tall among the monsters and pushed him forward when he knew he should be buried alongside them in her eyes.

The old man pressed the little silver remote against the glass and smiled. "If it's death you want, Goku, I'm happy to show you to your grave."

The androids were soon circling around him like vultures. Vegeta charged his ki to the limits of his collar. His body backed in small defensive steps, round and round, watching them, never turning his attention as he waited for their strike.

The twins were grinning. They seemed to know all along just how much power they'd need to fight him. It was a game to them. His careful watch beat between their faces, anticipating every flinch of their titanium nerves.

"What's the matter monkey? Aren't you curious to know what it's like to feel this kind of pain?" the girl asked.

"What pain?" Vegeta spat. The blonde robot was trying to egg him on. It was obvious. Her power levels were turned up as far as they went, according to the senile old man's little remote. Even though Vegeta couldn't sense the droid's energy, he saw the dial, and he was curious to know what it meant.

"Oh, I just mean, besides the beating I'm about to give you, I want to know what love feels like. An empty tin can, is that right? Tell me, Goku, what makes you any different from me?"

He recognized the characters spelling out the word love as much as he recognized his brother's earth name. But the meaning was lost without an equivalent. It didn't translate. Love was not a word his language hosted, like her hugs or kisses. It was only a thing the earthling girl said enough times to burn the foreign letters into his memory without much context. She said it a lot, about candy; about the places she'd been, her adventures; about her father. She said it about Tarble too. But it was still just a few characters lit on a screen. The word meant nothing.

"Fight or die," Vegeta said. "That's all I know."

"Funny you think we're the ones devoid of emotion." The girl crossed her arms. "It's sad really, wouldn't you say brother?"

The boy nodded. "Does not compute!" he mocked with stiff arms.

"Well, Goku…" she said. "Wave goodbye to your love then, will you?"

In a fraction of a second, both androids were upon him. Their movements so fast, he couldn't differentiate between the two. They ganged up, tossing fire, fists and feet in a hailstorm. Every single one landed against him, bruising and breaking against his body, before he managed to shoot up from the fray toward the ceiling, running away like a coward. What the fuck just happened?

Vegeta stared down at the twins, panting and bleeding. They'd broken his ribs and busted his face, but he was far from finished. Finally, this was a fight, but he'd run? Why?

"Had enough, monkey?" the male shouted. "Fight to the death, that's what we heard, but if you're gonna hide up there like a coward, I'm not gonna chase you! Unlike yourself, I have some pride."

_Fuck that._ Vegeta shot to the ground like a missile, threatening to tear the twins apart, blast their insides into a smoking tangle of hard-wires and hard-drives—blood too, however the fuck they'd managed that. Faster than the human eye, he dashed toward them. Faking a hit to the girl, he flipped mid-air to strike the boy head on, shouldering him into the opposite wall with enough force to shake the whole damn building. But the girl nicked him too, a well-placed hit against his already broken ribcage sent him hurling to the ground.

"You think you're so tough? You're a fucking toaster oven," Vegeta spat through bloodied teeth.

"Such big insults for such a little man."

"Hm…" Vegeta smirked. He ignored the broken bones, preferred standing face to face with the girl with flush fists. "And just what is it you're after? This some computer setting? No free will, just a useless default set to kill Goku? Well, I hate to break it to you sweetheart, but I'm not him."

"No?" She glanced between him and the plasma shield. "You think that changes anything? Gero wants you dead. And if my brother and I aren't the ones to do it, we're dead too. Whatever your name is, this isn't personal. This is how we'll survive."

"Don't you think I know that! Are you a moron? He's listening to us right now!" The girl seemed sincere enough for an android, but who the fuck was she kidding trying to pull the wool over her creator's eyes when he could clearly translate their every word.

"Then maybe we're as programmed as you say, monkey. You're right that my brother and I are set to kill you. But we aren't mindless drones. We're not robots, not like you think. This _is_ our choice. As limited as it is, we're not sorry to see you die."

"Then fuck you, bitch," Vegeta spat. "The feeling's mutual."

The female shot toward the ceiling, hailing blows and blasts that all but grazed his skin. Oh gods, this would be fun! He sidestepped her attacks like any other, spinning around her fire with the grace of a Saiyan Prince, a lifetime of training that served to save him thus far. Vegeta dipped and dodged around the androids' fiery shots, but he couldn't find the space to throw his own against them. The twins were fast! Despite what preconceived notions he thought about them, they were circling in. One punch here, one kick there, they teamed up with determination to stomp him. Vegeta felt the pain of his body busting against the floor, splitting it wide open. Like a torpedo breaking a mountain into a canyon, he buckled against the tiles.

Fuck, they were strong. If only he had his full ki, they'd be dead. It didn't make sense. If this was a competition, why was he being throttled, forced to fight with a hand behind his back? Looking to the blue-haired girl behind the plasma screen, he knew. This wasn't a competition at all. She was being punished; they both were.

These beings weren't as strong as him, not even at at full power. Despite their claims, they were mindless droids, were they not? They bled like him, so what? They were still forced to fight under their creator's will. Though she was right about one thing, he wasn't any different, forced to fight for her. That's what the female android was getting at, wasn't she? The earthling meant more to him than his own skin, and they all knew it. They mocked him with it—some stupid term, some abstract feeling he was supposed to harbor for the girl. Well, they were right if love meant not wanting to see her harmed. As pathetic as it was, it held some power too. Every time his thoughts drifted to the earthling, a new wave of energy flooded his veins, determined to kill the twins where they stood.

Vegeta powered up, threatening to turn the band around his neck to dust. A hearty cry broke the air as he flashed around them, darting between the pair in a streak of light. They had to die, all of them, if only to keep her safe. He knew that if he died, her fate would be out of his control. The netherworld, the place he went, he'd gladly go back if it meant she could escape the torture he was sure the general had in store for her. Not even the betrayal of his own people could touch the fury he felt when the man touched her. The way she flinched away in fear, it made him sick.

As if the earthling suddenly became his muse, newfound energy sprung-up around him, lit in a fantastic aura of pinkish ki. Vegeta wouldn't let them win, not if it meant imprisonment for the girl under that vile man. Love, if that's what they taunted, he'd take it, use it if meant saving her.

His buried rage had him beating androids like bugs. Each time one approached, he swatted it down in a vehement heat, again and again. These tin cans would rue the day they used the girl against him. Maybe he was crazy, a monster like the earthling said, but he wouldn't stop. The twins were flung fast and hard against the floor, barely able to stand.

"Goku! Stop!" the old man shouted. "You are nothing, do you hear me!"

Vegeta watched him frantically code against his keyboard, searching for power-ups to beat him. It wouldn't work. For once, even throttled as he was, he had something above himself to fight for, and it lit his ki in a blaze of glorious fury.

"General! Turn his power down! He's mad!"

Vegeta watched the general's wheels turn, debating which pony to bet on. Control, ultimately, that was the general's end game. He wanted a weapon he could control. And Vegeta wasn't that, not by a long shot.

He felt his ki pulling away as the general dialed it down on his remote, let more of it soak into the band around his neck. They wanted him dead by the end of this, it was clear. They wanted her to watch. And they controlled his power with a dimmer switch, turning it down when it shined too bright.

The earthling squealed her native curses on his behalf, like she always did. His little, valiant princess, his protector, his… love, as the android claimed? So be it.

"What's the matter? Warranty expired?" Vegeta cried through his busted lips.

"Hm," the male chuckled, "what do you say sister? Time to put the lab rat out of his misery?"

"Indeed. He's grating my last nerve. That's for damned sure."

The twins braced for an attack, this time letting him see it come. They both swirled around him in a cyclone of power, darts and dabs blasting him without remorse, as if they had something to prove. As much as he tried to block the onslaught of the androids' heated blows, his ki couldn't save him now. Vegeta felt the rips of his skin and breaks of his bones as the twins closed in. At full strength, he could destroy the gods-damned planet! But as it was, because of her, because of her technology, because of her hold on him, he was forced to suffer in silence. Batted around like a fly by some stupid robots.

The twins homed in despite his best defenses. Had they been faking him all along? Or was he just too consumed by the girl by now that he couldn't focus, couldn't see them coming? It was hard to tell. Shit, it was hard to breathe. A lung collapsed, he was sure, punctured by his own bones. He couldn't find the air to stand. The androids closed in, hovering above him with their lazy, victorious glee.

"Kill him!" the old man sung across the pane. "Kill him now!"

"Say goodnight, Goku," the male drawled, lighting his hand with a blast that Vegeta was certain would send his sorry ass to his grave.

He could hear the girl's hysteric cries over the com and tipped his head back to see her lunge toward the plasma shield, as if she thought she was strong enough to break it. The general had her by the collar of her shirt, tearing her away from the pane. Vegeta closed his eyes. He tried to hold onto an image worthy of his last. Her smirk as she tipped her head and dared him to shoot her, the pink color of her lips as she pulled him toward her, that smug grin she'd given him when they first spoke and she told him her name. Gods, he didn't even remember her name. The galaxy that traced his palm burned like grasping a hot coal. Hers would too, for the rest of her miserable life, until they met again in a dark corner of hell, the place he'd cursed her to with that mark. She'd be forced to bear it alone. For that, above everything else, he was sorry.


	13. The Lieutenant

**Chapter 13: The Lieutenant**

Goku was already standing outside the small, country home in the same grassy yard were Trunks spent his happiest days—fighting Goten on the lawn, sneaking off into the woods to hunt for bugs or catch fish in the lake, ChiChi's food. Kami, he missed her homemade meals and the family's cheery banter set around the kitchen table. He loved the chaos of it, especially Sundays when Gohan and wife Videl traveled all this way—four hungry Saiyans shouting over each other, tearing into the meal as if it was their last.

He especially missed Goten. Leaving him behind to fend for himself in the dark future they still shared was unending torture. Goten was strong, just as much as he, but jumping through the rings of time without his pseudo sibling felt like leaping from a plane without the ki to fly.

The air of this place, his home in the grassy foothills of the mountains set his trembling nerves at ease. He could make out Goku's orange gi in the distance. Seeing him, his crazy hair spiked out around his head that was bent toward the sky waiting for him, Gohan dashing about his feet chasing a butterfly—Trunks felt hope return.

He landed softly in the grassy lawn to meet the man's smiling face, waving at him as if he knew him already.

"Hi there!" Goku said. "Man, I haven't sensed an energy like yours in years! And you can fly too? Gotta say, soldier, I'm impressed!"

Trunks's features lit with a grin. He'd hug the man if he wasn't a stranger in his eyes.

"I'm Goku, and this is my son, Gohan." Goku placed his hands on his hips, twisting around to watch Gohan cling to the back of his pant leg.

"Goku... Yeah, uh... I know." Trunks fought the urge to tell the man everything, like he told Bulma. But it seemed that already his presence tested the sands of time. For better or worse, he couldn't tell. So far the kernels he'd kicked around somehow brought Strickland and Gero back a day early. And what was that sensation he felt in the hallway? It was instinct that brought him here to the Son's, another fated gamble. But maybe it was best to keep his mouth shut for once. Goku would help them regardless, he was certain. He fought down the selfish urge to reunite with the man, offering instead just the one bit of information that would move Goku to act.

"I'm here because Bulma's in trouble."

"Bulma! What kind of trouble? Where is she?" Goku twisted his brows with worry.

"The military base. My... uh... It's our friend they've captured. Gero, he's using him. He thinks he's you, and he's going to kill him."

"Gero!" Goku's merry countenance morphed in the blink of an eye, replaced by the spirited determination Trunks remembered from countless spars and tournaments. It was the mask Goku wore before facing an opponent. But in this one, a bitterness frothed in the man's eyes that Trunks had never seen. "Gero is alive? He's hurting people because of me? Listen, I don't know who you are, but I won't allow anyone to suffer for my actions. Whatever you need, soldier. I won't back down from a fight."

It was the response Trunks expected, and he was grateful for it. This version of Goku was the same he'd always known. He was the essence of hope, trigger-ready to do what he believed was right without any concern for his own wellbeing. Doing what was what needed to safeguard the people he loved was Goku's trademark, and Bulma was one of those people.

Goku shooed his son inside. The small glimpse Trunks caught of the mother that raised him as she ushered Gohan into the small cottage made his heart ache with longing. He would run to her if he could, bury himself against her and breathe in the love ChiChi had given him all these years. She treated him no different than her own sons, not once, not in discipline and not in love. He wished he could explain that to her now, to Goku too, just how grateful he was for the way they cared for him as one of their own. If they had more time, maybe, he'd get the chance.

He brushed his sentiments aside as Goku called the Nimbus and hopped onto the cloud without a second thought, only waiting for Trunks to take to the darkening sky and guide him.

* * *

Vegeta fought the androids with the same grace she imagined in all his brutal tales, darting around them in a blur of light. He was beautiful in a way, evading their attacks with simple twists and turns of his body. He met them with hard blows when they least expected, tossing them into the floor without effort. Kami, he was a god, wasn't he? No, not a god, he was a monster, a killer. Like he said himself, he wasn't Goku.

She could hardly speak, thanks to the man, forced to watch him in silence, watch him fight against the very beings her son told her to save. But how? How would she spare the androids? More importantly, why would she?

She'd asked Trunks how to save Vegeta, but that was before... Maybe the kid knew he would try to kill her and he meant to save the androids instead—a simple omission he spared for her sake. If that was the case, she wasn't sure she could do it, sacrifice Vegeta for them to secure the fate of the future. Even though he tried to kill her, she didn't want him dead. That meant her whole goal was off the mark. It wasn't an excuse, and she certainly wouldn't let what he did to her slide if he lived. But she did want him to live. Every fiber of her being ached for him to live.

That person that threatened her life, that left these marks against her throat, that wasn't him. It couldn't be him. She'd been trapped with the man for over a month, and he was deadly, yes, but not to her. To her he was sweet, funny in his own way, loving even, every time he breathed into her hair like it was his salvation. Giving up on Vegeta was not something she was prepared to do. His past was troubled, but he could be saved.

Bulma egged him on, shouting in his language over the com as best she could. She begged him to beat the androids into the ground. No matter what Trunks said, or what her future self told him, she couldn't stand by and watch them kill him. As much as she hated the man in the moment, she was rooting for him with every blow that sent the teens hurling into the floor.

Nerfed, that's what the girl said. Bulma watched Gero turn the dial on his remote, releasing more of their power. It was working. Each time he spun the dial, Vegeta became victim to their charge. A shot against his ribs, an audible snap heard over the com-feed quaked through her nerves, stole her breath as if she'd been struck herself. But her prince couldn't set his pride aside; he taunted the wizard behind the window, asked for more. Bulma shouted at the stubborn man, unable to stop herself, earning a fisted warning at the back of her neck. The threat with which the general stared her down sent a cold shiver down her back. She didn't dare speak, watching him fake a tap against the remote's big button.

Gero spun the dial of the androids' remote to its limit. As much as his robots could show gloating emotion, they circled around Vegeta with newfound confidence. Then the girl said something, asked him about love. The question flustered him, earned Bulma a serious glance behind the pane. The general chuckled in her ear. As much as Vegeta was being used to taunt her, she was serving the same purpose for him.

Suddenly, the androids were winning. Vegeta shot above them to escape their heavy blows. He was wounded. Blood dripped from his busted brows, and his cracked lips stained his ivory teeth. His chest heaved, panting against his broken ribs, but he was still in the fight. Even as the girl hit him, sent his body to tear up the armored tiles of the floor, he got up again, found his stride, he beat them both. Blow after blow, the androids cratered the ground until there was nothing left but jagged shards.

Gero raged over the com-feed, kept calling him Goku. They all still believed that he was. More than the general, Gero's hatred for her friend was spat in vitriolic curses, urging the general to turn his power down. The general wanted power. They had Vegeta captured; they had her technology to use his power the way they wanted, but for Gero, that wasn't enough. He wanted vengeance for the Red Ribbon Army, the destruction of his life's work by Goku's hands. The turn of the general's dial meant Gero would get his wish. The teens overtook him, swirling around Vegeta in a united front. They were going to kill him.

Panic set in as Bulma glanced around the room. She'd beat the men around her dead if she had to, steal a gun from the general's belt, something! Hoffstead still hovered behind her. If she went for the general's gun, she'd be shot dead by that mindless drone.

That's when she noticed Gero's remote. All but useless now that the androids were maxed out, he'd set it on the desk next to him. Just one step to the left and it would be in her grip. The general's too. He was engaged in the fight, Vegeta's remote loosely clasped between his fingers, just inches from her arm. If she nabbed that and managed to get to Gero's device too, she could brick the androids and turn up Vegeta's power.

Bulma inched closer to Gero, minuscule steps that wouldn't draw the men's attention. Her fingers wrapped around the device, flicking it up inside the sleeve of her coat. She moved back toward Strickland.

The androids knocked Vegeta to the floor, his body skidding to a stop before the window. He couldn't breathe, not well anyway. His breaths were wheezy and labored. Blood sputtered from his lips like he'd popped a lung. As Gero shouted over the line to kill him, Bulma fought to make her move, but Trunks's words echoed in her head, holding her back. She wanted to trust the kid. Trunks came back to save Vegeta, to save her too; that's what he said. Maybe this was the mistake he was referring to, what she did in their future: tried to brick the androids.

Gero wanted Goku dead, the female said it first, and he would achieve that end by any means necessary. He'd put bombs inside his weapons before. Why not now? He wouldn't hesitate to sacrifice his own creations for petty vengeance. If they were stuffed full of ammo, she couldn't risk it. Vegeta would surely be a casualty of the blow with the way they were hovering over him. Instead she watched helplessly and hoped Trunks's words were true.

The teens lit their hands with energy, standing over Vegeta with wicked taunts as he struggled to breathe. It was too much. Panic burst wide all around her as she thrust herself at the window in desperation, pounding at the shield in a fit. She couldn't help it. She failed him, and now she'd live the future Trunks's described, haunted by him.

Her hand began to burn, like before. Streaks of light ignited in their palms, their pinkish heat reflecting off the web of cells in the plasma's shield. They lit the room, blinded the men around her. Bulma watched them shield their eyes as her and Vegeta's brands shot light against the pane. Now was her chance, Bulma darted for the general's remote. Though before she could reach it, a blast came hurling through the window, turning the plasma's particles into a fine dust.

A ringing split her ears; they were bleeding. Bulma pulled herself from the back wall of the control room where she and Gero had landed. To her right, Strickland scrambled to his legs like a newborn foal in the thick smoke, his black suit dusted white with minuscule fragments of glass. He frantically pressed the button on Vegeta's remote, but nothing happened.

"Ambush! Ambush from the Tank!" he called over his walkie as he scrambled to the back door on all fours. "Hold them off!" he shouted to Hoffstead, who was finding his own weak legs.

The androids stepped into the control room like ghosts, their silhouettes blanketed in the smoky haze. As she tried to back away from the arm that stretched before her, Bulma's body hit a wall. There was nowhere to run. But as she pinched her eyes shut, waiting for a blast to tear her cells apart, instead, she felt herself being tugged to her feet.

"Go," the male said, jutting his head toward the main room.

"The remote first." The girl opened her palm and Bulma quickly placed Gero's control in her hand.

They were saving her. She was too stunned to say thank you, too worried about Vegeta. She dashed into the Tank to where he laid, praying he wasn't dead. Thank Kami or the androids, whomever chose to spare him, Vegeta was moving, trying to sit up when Bulma reached his side.

"You're okay!" she cried. The chip in his collar hissed with a tiny trail of smoke. She meant to duck her arms around him to pull him to stand, but as her limbs circled around his body and she inhaled the familiar earthy scent of his sweat she stopped and held him instead. Kneeling on the floor, she pressed herself into him, trying to avoid pressure against his broken bones as she buried her nose in the man's neck. He hugged her back, willingly, almost desperately. At the pained huff he released against her neck, Bulma couldn't help but cry. She knew he hated her crying, but it she couldn't fucking help it. He was alive! They broke the future. Trunks's future, that was now in their control… almost.

"We have to go. We aren't free yet," she said. Managing to tear her weepy face from his shoulder, she dared to look the monster in the eyes. The reddened film that'd been cast over them was gone, depleted or caged away, she couldn't be sure. Only the inky blackness she came to trust remained, but he refused to stare back. Vegeta was looking over her shoulder.

"No, woman. Not yet," he said, tensing beneath her arms.

Bulma spun around to meet the barrel of Lieutenant Hoffstead's ki-gun. It seemed the universe, the gods, the choices of individuals and their shitty decisions, whatever it was that ruled their world wasn't about to cut them any slack.

"Step away doctor!" he said, his hand shaking against his weapon. "I'm sorry, but I can't let you go."

Bulma placed herself in front of the injured Saiyan, blocked him from the lieutenant's deadly dart, as much as her small frame could. "You're a good man, Hoffstead. Aren't you? Let him go. Let us go!"

"I'm a soldier, Briefs, always have been. System's there for a reason. One broken link, and the whole thing comes apart. Even you know that. I know you're smart, but what makes you think your agenda is the one to follow?"

"Mine's humane! I'm not trying to kill anybody! Please, just put down the weapon. Don't you see, your general left you here with the most powerful weapons on Earth like a lamb for slaughter. He doesn't care about your life, not anyone's. He only wants glory."

Bulma watched the androids taunting their creator from the corner of her eye. All she had to do was keep the lieutenant talking, long enough for them to help. She knew she'd be eating her words if she let the androids kill Hoffstead, but this was his chance to make amends. He had a chance. If he didn't take it, that was his mistake. She was done making mistakes. Vegeta was alive, and she was going to keep him that way.

Lieutenant Hoffstead was at an impasse. After forty years in the service, his youth spent in training, the best years of his adulthood spent in wars against nations, against underground criminal armies, against powerful alien kings—nothing had prepared him for a fight against a twenty-something year old girl and her infatuation with a super-powered monkey.

His orders had always been simple, and he always carried them out simply. But this young doctor, she complicated things and always had. From the moment he met her as a teen, she fought against the chain of command with her own code of ethics that was only known unto herself. Orders be damned if they didn't agree with the spirit of the great Bulma Briefs.

It was brave, he'd admit, but not honorable. There was no honor in insubordination, in traitors. That's what she was, a traitor. But deep down, Hoffstead respected the girl more than his general.

It was true, his general left him here to die, but that was his order, and it wasn't out of line. Strickland may not be the type of general that went down in history with the noble reputation of the military's greatest heroes. He'd never sacrifice his life for those under his command. But most generals didn't. They gave orders and stood on the sidelines, coached their men and women from afar.

Strickland was a self-serving piece of shit, that was true. Hoffstead knew that, but he was still his commanding officer. Being a prick wasn't enough cause to disobey the man. To disobey the general would be to turn against his own moral code, a lifetime of service. Yet now, those beliefs were face to face with the girl's own, had been for weeks. He'd tried to shirk them away, to convince himself that the girl wasn't falling in love with the creature. But clearly, he was a fool. And here they were, a young woman and her pet versus the world's western army, and he was the one to make the call.

A flash of light to his left, Hoffstead didn't have to turn his head to know the androids killed their master. Androids, if that's what the kidnapped teens could really be called. More like unconsented augmentation, in his humble opinion, and they weren't the first that wretched scientist captured.

Shit, maybe he _was_ wrong. Maybe Briefs was right, wasn't she? _Humane_. He'd never thought himself to be _inhumane_, but those kids, even the monkey, they weren't here by choice. He'd known that all along; the facts irked him all along, but he never had the courage to question them. The girl made him question them. Maybe his silence made him just as culpable, as if he'd captured the teens himself. He did though, captured the monkey at least, shot it while it was unconscious, carried it here to be tortured.

Watching her kneeling on the floor, her arms outstretched covering the alien as she did so many times before, watching the alien coil its tail around the doctor's waist, Hoffstead felt the grip around his weapon slack as he let it clatter to the floor.

"You are a good man, Hoffstead." Bulma said, eyeing the androids as they made their way back to where she and Vegeta stood.

Vegeta was leaning on her heavily. With his arms wrapped around her, the weight of his body threatened to take her down as he used her small frame to brace himself upright. His shallow breaths wheezed over her shoulder.

The male android blasted a hole through the ceiling. "You should leave. We can handle the rest."

"Wait!" Bulma felt Vegeta's arms tighten around her waist, ready to fly. "Spare him, anyone you can! The general's the only one you're after now. That understood?"

"Roger that, blue," the boy said, glancing back to Hoffstead's shaking form.

"Thank you." Bulma looked between the twins. How she could possibly convey her gratitude, she didn't know. Trunks was right after all. The androids, they saved them, shot the chip in Vegeta's collar, promised to spare the soldiers. How something Gero programmed could be more human than the man himself was a mystery.

Vegeta grunted as he gripped her tightly and blasted through the hole in the ceiling. Up and up they flew into the night sky. Bulma clung to the man with one arm as the floor beneath her feet stretched further away. Soon they were above the chaotic fray of the base below, an ant farm of soldiers, tens of thousands called to action below them. They disappeared from view along with everything beyond the tips of Vegeta's boots, until they pushed above the thick blanket of clouds that stretched over the land below like miles of open sea. Bulma was scared shitless. She'd ridden with Goku on the Nimbus before, but this was different, scary different, skydiving to roller coasters different. It didn't dawn on her how true the fact was until Vegeta hit the upper atmosphere, and his grip around her waist, tail and all went slack as the Saiyan passed out and they began to free fall.


	14. The Bond

**Chapter 14: The Bond**

A blast cracked the air, shot through the roof of the Tank in a pillar of white light. Trunks's heart sank with the falling debris. Were they too late? He looked back toward Goku, who shook his head.

"They're alive, soldier. I can feel him."

Trunks could too, finally, but it was weak. His ability to read energy signatures wasn't as strong as Goku's, but it was enough. Vegeta was alive. One blip that read above the power of an ordinary human meant he was alive, but barely.

Sirens broke through the low roar of ten-thousand soldiers preparing for battle. That's when he saw them; a blur of black and blue shot up from the hole in the building towards the clouds to take cover from the onslaught of darts shot from the base below.

"We'll meet them up top!" Trunks launched toward the thick ceiling of clouds to meet his parents head-on. He couldn't see them, but he was grateful for the cover and tracked Vegeta's ki as it cut through the grey fog toward the clear sky above. Stars began to peek through the mist like the shimmering surface of a murky lake. But just before he broke through to the clear atmosphere above, Vegeta's ki dropped off his radar, and Bulma's hoarse scream rode the wind to his ears. Trunks fought through the fog to find her.

"Goku! Catch him!" he shouted, hoping the man could hear him, let alone find Vegeta in the thick vapors that hung over the land below. Bulma's shouts, her tiny burst of energy, led Trunks to her. His mother flailed her limbs like wings, an angel fighting against the dark night. He swooped down and caught her. Panicked, raspy gasps shot from her lips, and the whites of her eyes shined brighter than the moon if there'd been one. But she was okay, it seemed.

Goku's familiar, strong energy was easy to follow as he led them a safe distance away from the base before he dipped below the clouds. The Saiyan tossed a thumbs up before he shot off toward the distant mountains with Vegeta out cold across his lap.

"Can you slow down a bit?" Bulma's small voice rasped against his ear.

Trunks finally looked down to his mother in his arms. She gripped him around his neck, but awkwardly with one arm. It was then he noticed the bruises around her neck and strained to look at her free hand, swollen and purple.

"Did they hurt you, Bulma?"

"I'm fine. Just slow down please. I'm feeling sick."

Trunks let up his pace. Just what in the hell happened to her? She never said anything about being strangled in her time. He wasn't an idiot; that's what happened. Somehow, he knew it was Vegeta. Perhaps it was the way she brushed it off. But even if she lied, as talented as she was at it, she couldn't lie about his father. He always gave her away. A tell whenever she spoke about him: it was the same, subtle twitch of an eyebrow; the right one flicked up at the corner, always, every time, for a fraction of a second. _Vegeta is complicated_... That's what she always said. What a broad term.

A part of him wondered if this scenario played out in his time too, or if it was a butterfly effect of his own presence. Not that either option would sit well with him, but he couldn't help but wonder if his mother in the future omitted the fact for his own sake. Perhaps, she didn't want him to think less of a man that wasn't around to redeem himself, as if it wouldn't be fair to his father's memory. It made sense not to speak ill of the dead, but that didn't make it any less revolting. How could he hurt her like that, clearly try to kill her? Every conversation they'd ever had about Vegeta replayed in his head as they flew. She'd glorified him in his time, but now he questioned her stories. Not exactly sane was his mother in his timeline. But this didn't seem like something Bulma Briefs would let go or even sugarcoat for his sake, at least he hoped. Kami, Vegeta was a pain in the ass even beyond the grave.

Trunks touched down on the lawn next to Goku. The man was bent over his father with his ear to his lips.

"He's fine. Still breathing." Goku looked up at the two of them with an expectant shrug.

Trunks deferred to his mother, not wanting to rock the boat that was the entire timeline of the universe any more than he already had.

"He's your brother, Goku," Bulma said. Her friend squinted down at the man, his large hand resting on Vegeta's shoulder. Might as well get straight to the point. "An alien, a prince from some crazy empire. He was sent to a war somewhere far from here, but I think his ship was sabotaged, and he crashed here on purpose to die in the same place they think you did as punishment. Then _they_ captured him, Gero and the general. They thought he was you."

Goku said nothing, like he didn't hear her. He just stared down at the man with his brows pinched in thought. It was a funny look on him, not ever one to think too deeply. Goku's thoughts and his instincts seemed to ride the same rails. A man of action that never felt the need to deliberate, he always did the right thing without a second guess. But now, as he observed Vegeta passed out on the lawn, he was focused on some internal battle, as if he didn't believe her, or didn't want to. It was hard to tell.

"You're not from Earth, Goku. And wherever you're from, well, they have some fucked-up agendas. But Vegeta, he's not like them… He's been looking for you."

Still the man was mute. Bulma looked down at Vegeta too, his unconscious form sprawled across the grass. Thankfully, his cuts stopped bleeding, but the bruising around his ribs, that needed attention, at the very least to ensure he wasn't bleeding internally.

She knew how her voice sounded and how she looked to the two of them, the bruises that graced her throat, her puffy, shaking wrist. But she didn't want them to know that it was Vegeta that did it. There was no point in ratting him out. Not that she'd forgiven him, she just didn't want _them_ to hate him. She could hate him. But not Goku, his brother, the only person Vegeta seemed to care about, nor Trunks, his son he didn't know about.

Trunks dropped to his knees at Vegeta's side, staring at the unconscious person before him with his head bent the way Vegeta's always did when he met something alien—all his ferociousness lost in the adorable tilt of a puppy discovering the world. Bulma hid a smile as the boy placed a hand on Vegeta's cheek.

Trunks was glad he wasn't awake. He wouldn't know what to say to the man, not in conversation anyway. Shit, they didn't even speak the same language. Bulma was right though; they really did look alike. Minus the tanned skin and coarse, black hair, he felt like he was staring at his own reflection.

"Well, Vegeta. It seems you get a second shot. Don't fuck it up this time," was all Trunks could manage.

He wondered if Vegeta would be there in his future, or if time forked off and he'd return to the same dark place. He hoped it would be different. Maybe he'd know what to say then.

Trunks stood, not removing his eyes from his father as he brushed the grass from his knees. It was time to go; his mission wasn't over just yet. Bulma leapt from her seat and wrapped her good arm around him.

"You're leaving?"

"I am," he said. "First the androids, make sure they aren't killing my comrades right now. Then my future. I made a promise to you and Goten that I'd be back, and I intend to keep it."

"Who's Goten? You mentioned the name before."

Trunks glanced down again at Goku who was paying him no mind, staring at the man in the lawn with crinkled brows.

"Eh… Give it a year, Bulma." He winked and smiled with that infectious grin she couldn't help but return.

"Take care of him, will ya?" Trunks nodded toward Vegeta before his arms wrapped tightly around her in a hug. "Don't let him give you any shit either."

Bulma watched the boy disappear into the sky, a fast tear of light, like a firework. It was hard to believe the very same person was nothing more than a blob of cells inside her body. At the present moment, she was unable to even begin to wrap her mind around the genius of her future self that brought him here. For now, it was enough just knowing that she'd be a better mother than that person. Gods knew Trunks deserved so much more than her future self had been able to provide.

"We should get him inside, Goku."

Her friend seemed to finally grasp his bearings, nodding before he scooped Vegeta back into his arms and led them into the little cottage. ChiChi, of course, was aghast at both Bulma's and the strange man's appearance. She ran to wake Gohan from his bed, directing Goku there before she dashed about the house to collect first-aid supplies. The groggy boy trailed at Bulma's heels rubbing his little fists against his eyes as he tried to discern what the adults were up to in his bedroom.

Setting Vegeta down on his son's bed, Goku continued to stare at the man like he was an alien… no surprise.

"Gero's back?" he asked, ignoring the elephant in the room.

"Not anymore. He's dead now. Trunks..." Bulma paused, debating what parts of the story to relay. Her son warned her about interfering with time, and she should know better since her future self warned him in the first place. "I mean, androids, Gero's own creations, they rebelled and killed him. They saved your brother, too. That soldier helped me. You both did."

"Well, glad to assist." Goku smiled, but it seemed fake the way the muscles around his eyes refused to participate with his brows still stuck in that odd, contemplative bend. He wanted to ask her something personal, but he was hesitant. Gohan clasped his hands around his father's elbow, standing on the tips of his toes to observe the man on his bed.

"Hey bud, go see if your mom needs help." Goku softly poked the boy under his arm.

The prince was beginning to stir. All the telltale signs she recognized: his tail began to flick, and his eyes traced the backs of his lids as he mumbled incoherently. Better she wake him up herself.

"Vegeta." Bulma shook him by the shoulder. "It's me. Wake up," she said in Saiygo, earning a perplexed stare from her friend on the other side of the bed.

"He doesn't speak English," she told him.

Vegeta's lids fluttered open to a blurred image of the Earth girl, and he blinked furiously to bring her into focus. A part of him wondered if this was a dream. Or maybe, he'd died and made it to the heavens, and she was it. Eternity with the face of that woman—gods, that would be good. He'd been to countless planets across the universe, encountered thousands of species, but no other beings appeared quite like this one. She was the glittering oceans from his favorite dreams, as if the little planet originated with her, born from a single blue cell that colored her eyes.

She was here though, wasn't she? This wasn't a dream. Vegeta reached out to touch her, but was stopped short as a thought burst inside his head that wasn't his own. It asked him if he hurt her.

"Tarble?" Vegeta whipped his head to the other side of the bed. It was... That hair! Vegeta recognized him immediately by the tufts of black spikes that jutted around his head in a familiar pattern. This wasn't his brother; it was Bardock's son and Raditz's brother, a lowly third-class exile Vegeta had met but once when he was a child. But how could that be? How was he, of all people, so inescapably grounded inside his head like kin?

"Kakarot!" Vegeta lunged at the man in a spurt of fury that far exceeded his pain. Broken ribs be damned. Out, he wanted him out. Out of his head, out of his sight. "What the hell are you doing here? Where's Tarble? Get out! Get _off_ me!"

The lowly Saiyan was holding him down, pressing against his shoulders. It was hard enough to breath already. His lungs felt tight, and no matter how hard he inhaled, air would barely fill them as he struggled under Kakarot's grip. Vegeta growled with as much ferocity as his lungs would let, as if he could spook the rush of thoughts that swarmed his head. The man wondered why he was fighting him, why he attacked the girl before. Kakarot stared back with as much intensity, refusing to ease his grip over Vegeta's body and mind. Even if Vegeta lowered himself to crack Kakarot's thick dome with an undeserved elucidation of his royal mind, the link between them was one-sided. Like any other language, Kakarot had lost this one long ago.

"Vegeta stop! What's wrong with you?" the woman scolded.

"He's not him! He's not Tarble." Vegeta didn't turn to answer her directly. Kakarot's stupid face, his stupid thoughts held his attention.

"Goku, let him go."

She wished she had her translator so they could at least talk to each other. Reluctantly, Goku sat back down but kept the prince pinned with a look of bitter distrust that Bulma had only ever seen on him when faced with a mortal adversary. Vegeta didn't lunge for him again, but he stared back at Goku with mutual enmity as he panted shallow breaths between his blood-stained lips.

"Who is he then? Use your words."

Without pulling his glare from her friend, he answered sourly, "He's a third-class. Raditz's brother."

"Okay. Who's Raditz?"

"My pairing."

"I don't know what that means. Look, I know it's hard to talk."

"My fucking pairing! My battle partner. We were paired together as children. Trained together, sent on missions. Kakarot was Tarble's, but he's... Tarble is..."

Vegeta dragged his gaze back to her, but he wasn't really looking. Lost in his own head, his pupils skittered back and forth, unfocused on anything as he tried to grapple with the fact that Tarble might be dead, or at the very least, lost again to the infinite universe. His anger toward Goku was misplaced, but Bulma could understand it.

"This doesn't mean he's dead. Look, Goku... err... Kakarot, he can still help you. You've seen how strong he is. Let him help defeat these Colds, and then we'll find your brother together. If they knew where they sent Kakarot, they know where Tarble is too. And I promise, I will hack the shit out of your council's system and track him down. Have hope."

It seemed to work. Tension slipped from his face with a defeated sigh as Vegeta's eyelids dipped shut. But it lasted only for a moment. When ChiChi and Gohan appeared in the doorway, they sparked open in an instant, a pair of tripped fuses flipped back to life.

Vegeta nearly sprung from the bed again when the halfling entered the room. Sensing his father's tension, the kid burst with a pop of energy far above Kakarot's own. But how? He was a halfling and a child. Ki flashed around the boy in a crackling spark like water on hot oil, before Kakarot talked him down.

That kind of power was impossible, or it should have been, theoretically. Kakarot's too. The girl was right, as much as he hated to admit, the man outclassed many of the elites. Like some cosmic joke, a third-class and a halfling cub raised on this tiny rock were both ripe with power. And Tarble, she could find him? Only a fool would cling to hope, but she was a genius. If anyone could find him, it would be her. He looked back at the girl and nodded.

Bulma turned to her friend, side-eying his wife who made her way over to them with a tray full of medical supplies. She braced herself for ChiChi's lip. "Goku, are you up for another fight?"

As she explained the Saiyan's war, Goku grew more animated, clapping a fist into his palm. Same as every adventure they embarked on as kids, Goku wasn't just happy to help, he was drawn to a good fight like a moth to light. The idea of meeting his biological father and brother, who were both fighting on the front lines, seemed to add just the right sentiment he needed to earn his wife's begrudging approval. Everything was going swimmingly, until Vegeta spoke up.

"The halfling comes too."

Bulma whipped her gaze back to him in shock. "The kid? But, why?"

"He goes with you to my planet for training. Seems the little brat is strong, even more so than his father. That's the deal. You both can stay with Kakarot's mother. Like I said, I trust her."

"Vegeta, they'll never agree to that. He's only five!"

"Then he's long overdue. The boy comes."

Logging the fact that the nanny Vegeta had been speaking about this entire time was Goku's biological mother, Bulma looked up at her friends' expectant faces, to the shy boy who hid behind his mother's skirt, eyes wide as he cautiously peeped at the cantankerous man on his bed. Wonderful, she had to be the one to ask. Couldn't the stupid prince learn their language already?

"Say, uh... Would Gohan like to meet his grandmother?"

ChiChi glanced to her son behind her before she looked back to Bulma, her husband, and the alien prince with an atomic level scorn that threatened to reduce them all to stardust. "What do you mean? He wants Gohan to go to war too? Over my dead body, Bulma Briefs!"

"Not war! Just to his home planet. With me."

"This _is_ his home planet! My son's not going anywhere. He's five! He starts school next month! He's not a fighter, we agreed!" Her voice pitched as she stomped a foot hard against the wood and shot her dark eyes across the room at her husband who was sheepishly rubbing the back of his neck.

"Come on ChiChi. He'll be fine, Bulma's going."

"I don't care if Bulma's going! She doesn't have children. She's reckless, like you used to be. Just look at her!" ChiChi whipped an arm in her direction.

If Bulma was a turtle, she'd be cowering in her shell. ChiChi's wrath was brutally honest, pointing out the obvious without putting on airs. It was true. Bulma was a mess of bruises and broken bones, always finding herself in the arms of danger. It was the thing she had in common with Goku, the reason they'd even met. They both sought adventure, found themselves in life-threatening situations more times than they could count.

At the childish, pleading look Goku gave his wife, ChiChi broke. She chucked the tray at his face. A metallic ripple rang like a gong off the elbow he lifted to block it, along with a patter of pills that rained across the hardwoods. ChiChi picked up her son and charged out of the room.

"I'll talk to her." Goku grinned awkwardly. "Just get some rest, okay? There's blankets on the couch."

Before he stood to leave, he plucked a senzu bean that landed on Vegeta's chest and held it out to him. "It's the last one I have, but it will heal you."

Vegeta heard him. They didn't speak the same language, but his thoughts were more than enough to understand what the man was offering. Kakarot was a fighter, that much was true, and despite his woman's reproval, he wanted his son to learn his trade. He may have grown up on Earth, but Kakarot was a Saiyan through and through, much like his father. As Vegeta opened his palm, he heard the thought asking about the mark inside his hand, the same as hers, where Kakarot dropped the bean. But Vegeta offered nothing in return. It was between him and his own woman. _Bulma_, that was her name, what Kakarot and his earthling said.

Once they were alone, Bulma stood to gather the supplies that'd been thrown across the room.

"Bulma..." She heard her name fall from Vegeta's lips for the first time. It was odd hearing it in the prince's deep, husky tones. _Onna_, that's what she knew; _female humanoid,_ the translation. It seemed he was finally paying attention, but so what? It didn't change anything. As she sat back down and set the medical supplies on the bed, she watched the prince's face, unable to read the feeling behind his stolid mask. But then, he extended his hand, the senzu bean pinched between his fingers—an olive branch.

"Vegeta, you can barely breathe. Take it. I'll be fine."

He shook his head, snatched up her good hand and closed it around the bean. It was as much of an apology as she was going to get. Still, she appreciated the gesture. As soon as she swallowed it, her wounds melted away; her voice became clear, and her bones shifted back into place, like nothing ever happened. Except it did. It wasn't like she could just forget about it. Sure, she was glad he was alive, and she would still help him find his brother, help him upgrade his tech, and help him win this war. But beyond that, the future wasn't so clear.

She was pregnant with his kami-damned kid, and she wasn't even sure that she would tell him. Maybe she'd leave Vegetasei and come back to Earth once she couldn't hide the fact. That gave her what, six months, roughly? Or maybe she wouldn't go at all and just help him remotely from Earth. That thought crossed her mind more than once as Trunks flew her here. Her son and those androids would catch the general. And if he was gone, so was the threat on her head. As much as she wanted to go off-world, embark on another adventure, she was impregnated by a man who tried to strangle her. Even if he wasn't in his right mind at the time, it didn't change the fact that he did it, whispered those awful words, stroked her face, mocked her, wrapped his hand around her throat. Bulma shuddered and bit her lip to hold back the sharp tears that needled her eyes. The memory made her physically ill. He was terrible.

Yet, as much as the royal prick deserved a night of pain, Bulma found herself caring for the man, checking him for signs of internal bleeding, dabbing iodine at his cuts, taping them, wrapping gauze around his torso like a mummy to stabilize his ribcage, a sedative to help him sleep. She even slept in the chair, hunched over Gohan's desk next to his bed. Kami, was she a sucker? Every time she imagined leaving his side, even to sleep on the couch, she missed him like an old addiction. So used to his presence now, she felt anxious sleeping alone—same as all those trips to the mess hall and barracks, the feeling lingered.

He was still asleep when she woke. The scent of coffee that wafted from the kitchen was impossible to pass up. Hopefully, the sedative was enough to keep him resting while she snuck off to pour a cup. She'd hardly noticed she went a whole month without her favorite vice, but now that she smelled it, damn. Bulma tiptoed from the bedroom into the kitchen.

ChiChi stood with her back pressed against the counter gazing blankly across the room at her son. Steam rose from the mug clasped tightly in her hands. Sensing Bulma, she turned, her eyes red and weary, but she still played the part of a gracious host, planting a small smile on her lips as she poured Bulma a mug.

Gohan sat on the floor in the living room, flipping through channels on the television. Bulma watched the kid as she inhaled the aroma of the steaming beverage between her palms. Besides his looks, he didn't seem anything like Goku when he was a kid. Gohan was shy, in some ways more mature than his father appeared at that age: reserved, well-spoken, and polite. But he wasn't a fighter as far as she could tell.

"You'll watch out for him, right?"

Bulma pulled her attention back to ChiChi who looked like she was about to cry into her coffee. She was really letting him go.

"ChiChi." Bulma set down her own mug to hug the woman. She didn't know her all that well, but she knew that ChiChi was just as headstrong as she was, so it was surprising that she'd give in. ChiChi was former fighter herself, a princess even. She had more in common with Vegeta than Bulma realized, but ChiChi had given up that life and convinced Goku to do the same, save for the occasional tournament. Risking her son's life for a stranger's sake didn't fit her mold, even if the Saiyans were Goku's family too. Yet, he found some sentiment to milk her, that much was true. Goku's persuasiveness was unparalleled, always managing to tap just the right button to get what wanted. Bulma wondered what it was.

"I'll guard him with my life," Bulma promised.

The woman hugged her back, but she didn't cry. She was too damn stubborn for that.

"Miss Bulma! You're on TV!" Gohan squealed.

Bulma looked over ChiChi's shoulder to see her face on the screen. The mugshot from her military ID was displayed next to Hoffstead's talking head. He was whistleblowing, telling the media about Gero and Strickland's grand adventures in weaponizing people against their will, explaining Gero's connections to the Red Ribbon Army. Those androids, they were runaway teens, humans before he modified them, and they weren't the first he'd captured. Hoffstead called Bulma a hero and said she played an integral part in bringing the department down to save them. He said nothing about Vegeta, but she was glad for that. Maybe it was guilt, or perhaps Hoffstead wasn't as dumb as she once thought, but she appreciated his silence. The prince didn't need any attention from the media nor anyone else. Strickland's photo appeared too, slipped through the cracks, it seemed. Now a wanted man, he likely escaped into the criminal underworld, where he'd be readily welcomed, same as Gero had once been. Trunks and those androids would find him, she was certain.

A gruff voice rumbled behind her. "It's time to go."

Bulma turned to glare at the prince who stood in the hallway, arms folded over his bandaged chest. He looked like hell—black and blue from head to toe, wrapped up in tape, dark circles under his eyes, ribs showing from his month of starvation.

"Are you ready?" she asked the boy's mother, clasping her hands around the woman's cheeks. ChiChi nodded, narrowing her eyes at the prince over Bulma's shoulder. "Where's Goku?"

"Korin's," ChiChi replied. "Hoping he has senzus for the warriors."

"Good man. Tell him to meet us at Capsule Corp?"

Bulma popped a capsule on the lawn with a helicopter to take them there, since Vegeta couldn't fly and she couldn't stomach the thought of breezing through the air that way, especially not with the kid too.

Gohan seemed confused as his mother littered him with kisses, but the woman didn't cry. Instead, she directed the boy to pile his school books and five suitcases of personal effects inside the chopper, reminding him, Bulma too, that his studies were his priority. The periodic table, human anatomy, algebra, she wanted it all memorized by the time he returned.

"If anything happens to him, Bulma Briefs, I swear to Kami I will hunt you down."

"We'll be back before you know it," Bulma told her, despite not having a clue when they would return. Months, years, who knew how long this war would take, or how long she would stay given her delicate situation. Bulma hugged Goku's wife again before she took Gohan's hand. "You ready bud? We're going to meet your grandma."

"Miss Bulma?" Gohan looked up at her with wide eyes. He spun his head around the yard, tossing worried looks between the three adults. Catching Vegeta's cold, impatient stare, the boy lurched. He pulled at her scrub pants with a yelp, begging to be picked up. Bulma lifted the kid into her arms, and he wrapped his tiny limbs around her neck and buried his face beneath her chin—quite possibly the sweetest little thing she'd ever met in her life. She'd never wanted a kid herself and even pushed Yamcha away over the fact, but as Gohan's hands clung to her shirt collar, Bulma couldn't help but feel excited that she'd be holding her own little boy in nine months—if gestation for Saiyan-human halfbreeds was the same as regular humans. Asking ChiChi in the moment certainly wasn't appropriate.

The woman looked heartbroken watching her child find comfort in Bulma's arms as they boarded the helicopter, off to a distant planet to teach him to fight. It was horrible, really. In Trunks's future, Gohan was everything his mother wanted him to be: a successful scientist, CEO of the largest, most innovative company on Earth. But in Trunks's future, the planet was being terrorized by a powerful intergalactic army, and Goku was dead. That was the justification for tearing the boy from his home planet and his mother, she told herself. If what Vegeta said was true, that Gohan held more potential than his own father, he may be the ticket that changed their future, maybe even more than saving Vegeta and the androids. With all of them, a united front, they couldn't possibly lose.

Piloting the helicopter with the boy buried against her chest, weeping, was a challenge, especially with the other man sighing dramatically from the passenger seat in between his offhand comments about how slow the chopper was compared to flying.

"Well, whose fault is it that you can't fly?"

Vegeta said nothing. The sugarcoated reminder that he tried to kill her didn't even earn a grunt. Guilt, she guessed, that's what his silence meant. It seemed the prince might just be capable of such an emotion. He'd given her the senzu bean when Goku meant it for him. A collapsed lung and gods knew how many bones were shattered under his skin—that he didn't complain about, only the speed of her helicopter. Go figure. After her comment, he took to staring out the window at the world below, tossing the crying boy an annoyed glance every now and then.

Capsule Corporation, her home, loomed in the distance.

"There it is, Vegeta! That's my house."

It pleased her to see the prince perk up, straightening his posture as he took in the West City skyline. Impressed, he appeared as he rubbed his fingers over the scruff of his chin. Not all strength was physical, that's what he admitted to her, and he wasn't lying. If his culture was backward, regressed compared to Earth's, maybe the cities were too. They paid too much heed to their primitive beliefs and relied solely on their physical strength, those were his gnawing complaints and the reasons he asked her to come with him. What was his planet or all the others like then? If West City drew the prince's attention, they couldn't be much.

For a man that made a living traveling to distant planets, for a man that could fly, it was funny to see his forehead pressed against the window, taking in the tall skyscrapers below like a little kid on their first airline flight.

She landed the chopper on the lawn in front of the large dome of her home. Vegeta didn't even wait for the whirling blades of the chopper to stop before he ripped open the door and hopped out, turning himself around in the open lawn with his head bent up to observe the surrounding architecture.

Gohan was still whimpering in her lap, his eyes pinched shut to the world around him. Bulma ran her hand down his back and over the fluff of his coiled tail.

"Where's my daddy?" he cried, finally peeping an eye to look at her.

Gods, he was so different from his father, night and day different. It worried her that they'd be splitting up at a trade planet. Traveling to Vegetasei on her own was frightening enough, considering she wasn't welcome and would have to remain incognito for the duration of her stay, guarded by Vegeta's loyal warriors. But taking the boy with her, to train to fight of all things, that just didn't sit well. She hadn't spent much time with Gohan, beyond the occasional visit to their country home and once at Kame House. He was in his element on those occasions, flanked by his father and familiar environments. How would the boy cope on a strange planet without Goku? Physically strong as he may read to Vegeta, Gohan's emotional constitution wasn't that of a fighter. He was... Well, she didn't know what he was yet. Maybe his meekness was a result of his sheltered life. Hell, when she was his age, she was chatting-up investors at galas, dragging them by the hand to show off her first inventions, confident and commanding. That stuff could be learned, couldn't it? Neither of his parents were this sensitive. Maybe this was good for him, in a way.

Bulma set the kid on the grass outside the chopper. Her new resolve would be to boost his self-esteem. There was no way she'd step foot on Vegetasei with the boy crying in her arms. The month-long trip to the planet would serve as an opportunity to bolster him.

"Follow me, kid." Bulma began walking toward the hanger where her father's ship was stationed, beckoning the boy to follow. As the only person in the vicinity that he recognized, Gohan ran to keep up, grabbing her hand once he reached her.

Vegeta walked alongside the woman and the weepy halfling, his arms crossed over his chest as his gaze darted across the open campus Bulma called home. It was unlike any other city he'd been to previously. Sure, some of them hosted large, glittering structures, but none like this—not that he'd seen anyway. Every large metropolis was made of stone or whatever nearby elements existed; a few towering pieces like castles, temples or pyramids, all of them dwarfed the slums below. This Earth city was magnificent. The entire landscape was made of tall, ergonomic structures that jutted up from the ground towards the heavens with no slums in sight. Lights danced around them with transportation vehicles darting in and out of the buildings, both in the air and on the ground. It was mesmerizing, watching the tiny cars shoot in every direction. Not that they needed cars on Vegetasei, but for a species that couldn't seem to fly, it was an impressive solution.

Her home was just as grand—small compared to the castle he grew up in, but new and modern. Judging by her quarters, the woman was a princess of Earth. Her home arched over the land like a half-buried planet, surrounded by outer silos, including the one which they were headed towards.

If only the kid would stop his crying. The entire trip, he wailed for his daddy. Gods, how was this blubbering infant this strong? Maybe Vegeta's ability to sense ki signatures was off due to the drugs. Yet those were gone from his system, and Kakarot read just fine. He was strong for a third-class exile, stronger than most elites. The kid had potential too, he just needed discipline and training. At least Bulma had come to her senses and stopped indulging his pathetic wailing, forced the boy to follow her on his own two feet.

The ship came into view from the hanger's open doors. It was huge compared to his pod, though smaller than the ships he knew Lord Frieza used. Those, he'd heard, were large enough to house an entire battalion, maybe more. This ship looked capable of hosting a six-man crew, max—a glorified pod, in essence.

Vegeta ignored Bulma as she led the boy up the ramp inside, opting to scope the thing out from the hanger. He circled around, examining the gleam of shiny metal, every impeccable detail. Not a dent or scratch on the thing, the plates were seamlessly bolted together as if it wasn't constructed by man at all and was simply carved from the earth itself, blemish free. She helped her father build it, she said, and it showed. The perfection, the care with which she gave to all her projects, himself included, was evident in the glossy orb he was to call home for the next month.

Once he'd orbited the thing and made his way back to the front hatch, Bulma came trotting down the ramp.

"Kid's all set. My father already stocked it. We should be ready to go once Goku's back."

Her arms wrapped themselves around one of his, maybe instinctually. But she let go as fast as she'd clung, tearing herself away as if she'd touched a flame. The look that passed over her face, biting her bottom lip with a frown meant she hadn't forgiven him. While he tried not to care, he longed for her to touch him again as he felt the heat of her palms leave his skin to cool like a dying world starved of its sun. Shit, he'd let her kiss him if that's what she liked. He'd given her the gods-damned senzu bean. What the hell else could he do?

Distracted by the earthling's antics, Vegeta barely registered the low-level power that crouched in their vicinity, nor the pops that ripped the air, two of them, one much louder than the other. But the second he heard them, he knew. A ki-dart hit his shoulder, and its poison spread through every limb in an instant, like warm milk lulling him to sleep.

Bulma's eyes drew wide before they went glassy and closed. Her hand stretched out against the air, and he reached forward to catch it in his own, softening her fall against the hard concrete below. Whatever had hit her was something else. Blood spurted from a hole in her chest, and Vegeta collapsed languidly on top of her.

Every fiber of his being fought to stay awake, to push himself up, to compress his hands over Bulma's wound as his vision tunneled around him. _Press_, was the only thought in his mind, not kill whoever shot them. _Stop the blood_. It oozed between his fingers and lined her pinkish lips as she coughed, struggling to draw air. _Press, stay awake, save her_. Vegeta couldn't stop the hot, stabbing pain that leapt into his throat and caused his jaw to quiver. His eyes burned, and a strange noise broke his lips as he fought to remain conscious.

"Well if it isn't Doctor fucking Briefs and her shit eating monkey," Strickland gloated, waltzing up to the creature, guns drawn. They weren't going anywhere. As much as he wanted to capture them both and teach them the errs of their ways, he was a wanted man. No thanks to that crackpot Gero and his inability to tame a couple of teens. No thanks to Briefs too, the cagey bitch plotting against him with her filthy monkey lover at every turn. Not to mention his shithead lieutenant who decided to lift his skirts and show off his testicles. Gods, the universe was riddled with sinners! If he couldn't use them to protect the planet, they deserved to rot in the cold, hard ground, buried six feet deep in the shit of the Earth, their plots unmarked and forgotten to the rest of civilization.

He'd shoot her again, right between her pretty blue brows, but the monkey was trying to save her. It was cute, hearing the creature cry as she bled out. The beast's disgusting tail beat against the air, lashing franticly as it failed to control the mortal gunshot beneath its palms. The glowing though, what was that about? Briefs's hand was lit with a flare like it had been in the lab before the androids went rogue and blasted the place to hell. The monkey, his hands always tossed fire, but the doctor, that was odd. Pink light shot from her palm like a laser beam. The same light spread under the alien's palms that were pressed against her heart. Was he healing her? Was that possible? Strickland raised his weapons, ready to douse the ill-fated couple with another round, put the dogs down before the vultures came hunting for himself.

But suddenly his throat constricted as he was lifted off the ground, held by the collar of his bloody shirt. Strickland turned his gaze from the crying monkey below to meet another face-to-face.

"It's… you... It's _you_!" he stuttered.

The whites of his eyes popped from his skull like he was seeing a ghost. But it wasn't a ghost. It was _him_! The monkey boy! Gods, he would recognize that hair anywhere, jutting out at every angle; it hadn't changed in nearly a decade, minus the tail. Fuck him, there was more than one! The monkey whacked the weapons from his hands with an easy swing, his dark, vengeful stare never leaving Strickland's face as he held him above the floor by the back of his shirt. Blue light licked across the monkey's other hand like smoke pouring from a chemical grenade; it curled around his fingers.

"You _are_ a god..." Strickland whispered as the the monkey set his temporal weapon against his chest, not uttering a word before the searing blast sent him flying twenty feet across the room through the hard wall behind him.

Vegeta knew Kakarot was there even if he didn't make a sound. The closer the proximity, the more the man's mind rooted his own. At first, he thought he was dreaming again, passed out from the serum, living in Kakarot's old memories. But no, this was real. He'd arrived, and he blasted the gods-damned menace into the next room. Vegeta hadn't realized how close to unconsciousness he was until the man wrenched him off Bulma's body, tossing him to his back alongside her. In his drug-addled state of mind, he fought to get back to her. _Press, stop the bleeding. Save her._ The same desperate thoughts tangled with Kakarot's own. The man was shoving him away, bent over his woman, tipping her head back as he dropped something into her open mouth. Vegeta tried to will himself toward her, not hearing his own strangled cries as he fought to lift himself from the floor, scrambling back to her weakly on all fours.

_It's okay._ The Saiyan was speaking into his head as he pressed Bulma's lips together and lifted her back from the concrete to let her head dangle loose over his arm, trying to force her lifeless form to swallow the senzu bean. _There we go. That's it._

Bulma gasped back to life in a flood of sweet relief that neary stopped Vegeta's heart. Her tiny fists gripped Kakarot's clothing as she stared up at him.

"Goku!" she cried and pulled herself up his arm to wrap the Saiyan in a hug. Words were exchanged between them that Vegeta couldn't understand. He was barely lucid, barely able keep his limbs from buckling onto the floor; but that didn't stop the jealousy rioting inside his chest as he watched them embrace, Kakarot and his woman. But she let go of him, spinning her gaze to his own. Bulma leapt from Kakarot's arms, flipping Vegeta to his back against the concrete. She held him down despite his weak attempts to pry himself away, pinning him between her thighs; her arms held his to the ground.

"Calm the fuck down, idiot. I'm trying to help you!"

A bean exchanged hands between them, and Bulma shoved it through Vegeta's gnashing teeth. A palm at the top of his head and one below his chin shoved his jaw shut, forcing him to swallow. As soon as the bean hit his system, the broken bones and punctured lung he suffered the day before were dissolved, shifted back into their original order. Though the serum he'd just been shot with remained, clouding his senses. The high of it confused him. Why was he fighting her? She was helping, wasn't she? Vegeta tipped his head, trying to take in the room. Kakarot at his side, the boy... the boy had heard the commotion and ventured a peek from the ship's open hull.

Kakarot spoke to her again, to Bulma, who responded with a nod. He left them alone to meet his son inside the ship.

Vegeta could toss her off his body now, if he wanted. But he didn't want to. Bulma held him down without thinking, like she was in a daze herself. Her fair features furrowed with a worried look he couldn't place. She glanced over her shoulder as if she expected the general to climb out of his hole and shoot her in the back. Or no, that wasn't it. Her gaze drifted out the open doors toward the compound she called home. There was nothing holding her to him anymore, now that Kakarot subdued the threat over her head. He should have done it himself, but he missed his chance, and now, the girl was free—free to stay, if that's what she wanted. Vegeta slipped his arms easily from her grip and rested his palms on her thighs, tracing them up to grip the girl's hips.

"Bulma," he said, trying to draw her attention.

She flicked her gaze back to him with the same anxious expression, biting her lip as her eyes flitted between his and the open door of the ship. "I, uh... I'm ready to go now."

Vegeta's brows lifted. She was coming after all? Probably for Kakarot's kid, if anything. Still, his stomach lurched hearing the words. The excitement he felt at the idea, he tried to hide it under an emotionless gaze. She was coming; that was enough.

She lifted herself from him, taking one last glance out the hanger's doors before she strolled up the ramp into the ship.

Vegeta watched her go, but he didn't follow. Not yet. He'd keep his promises to her that no innocents would ever be harmed. But he wasn't lying when he promised he wasn't her precious Goku; Saiyan as they both may be, Vegeta was a killer.

He picked up the gun Kakarot had whacked across the floor and waltzed over to the hole in the wall where the other Saiyan failed to permanently put down the menace. The whites of the general's eyes shined bright in the darkened cavern where he laid amongst the rubble, wheezing for a breath. Seeing Vegeta, they bugged desperately as he whined and begged in his pathetic language for mercy. A broad smile stretched across Vegeta's lips, revealing the sharp, pearly fangs beneath them, and his tail beat gleefully against the air.

"I don't understand you, shit eater," Vegeta said in Saiygo as he pulled the trigger on the Earth gun to pop a permanent hole between the general's eyes.

Meeting her inside the ship, the woman took command. Despite his ego and his experience, he let her have it. He was high, after all, not exactly in a position to navigate a new system, much less one in Earth's tongue. Vegeta found a seat next to Bulma, strapping in for take off. Kakarot and his brat buckled in at his other side, listening to the girl's directions as she triggered the ship to life. It rumbled against the ground, the engines igniting in a fierce, fiery storm as the dome above them opened wide, ready to blast them back into the space he came from. He ignored the countdown, Kakarot and Bulma's giddy cries, the boy's wide-eyes as he stared up at his father trembling.

Once the g-force hit them as the ship launched away from solid ground, up and up, piercing the Earth's atmosphere in a matter of seconds, the two loudmouths shut the hell up. Gravity held them to their seats like glue, unmoving, unable to do much else but stare through the distant portholes in awe as they were transported into the weightless expanse of the vast universe beyond their little world. The thrusters stopped, releasing the grip that held them to their chairs.

Surprisingly, the halfling was the first to leap from his restraints, charging out of his seat toward the windows, jumping up toward the small porthole that was too far above his head to see through. Kakarot moved to help him, picking the brat up in his arms to let him gaze at the blue planet below.

Bulma followed, unclipping her belt to make her way toward the adjacent window. Her hand pressed against the glass, looking at the Earth between her fingers like she was trying to catch it. Vegeta felt the urge to follow. The second the woman lifted from her seat, he was behind her, watching the soft blue glow of her planet bathe her skin in its cool light. For a second, he drew his attention to the thing these people were so enamored by, but it was just a planet like any other. Why should he give a shit? He never felt this sort of admiration watching his own red home shrink from a porthole. The opposite, in fact, he was glad to be transported away from that place, the faster, the better. Yet he couldn't stop watching the girl as she stared back at the blue globe with a wistful smile. Her own blue orbs reflected off the planet's light as if she was the creator of that little speck in the corner of the infinite universe. She was though, to him, a goddess of Planet Earth. She was the girl that saved him.

Vegeta peeled her hand from the window, though she didn't seem to notice. It didn't pull her attention from the planet that was growing smaller by the second. Vegeta looked down at the tiny palm he held within his own and watched the brand he burned into her flesh fade away. The tentacles reversed their path, sucked up into the galaxy's core before that too disappeared. He felt his own fade too, leaving their palms bare, unscathed, like it never happened. The tie that linked their souls together evaporated before his eyes. Empty, it felt, losing their link just like that. But the girl felt it too, the release of a nagging burn. Without looking away from the porthole, she moved her fingers over his open palm and entwined them with his own. She squeezed their palms together, if only to let him know that their bond wasn't really broken after all.

* * *

_Author note: Thank you for reading! Most of my fics are on Ao3, but slowly bringing them over (maybe not the emo band AU cus it's a 250k monster). SOMEDAY I will write part 2 of this series. The outline is done, but just trying to finish up a few other WIPs first! xoxox_


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